


The Shadow Partners

by SinisterScribe



Category: Dracula (TV 2020)
Genre: Agatha is So Done With His Shit, Agatha's Not Good Very Bad Day, Blood, Blood and Gore, Canon typical body horror, Dracula is Dramatic, Dracula is a Bit Not Good, Dracula loves science, Drugging, Eventual Smut, Explosions, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, I did not get to see a vampire slaying nun army in the show, I think I stole a line from SS9, Idiots in Love, Injury, Kidnapping, Mad Science, Mad Scientists, Major Character Injury, Mermaids, Robots, Sorta Hellboy Crossover, Sorta Shape of the Water Crossover, Sorta Sherlock Crossover, This Is Not Going To Go The Way You Think, Torture, Werewolves, boy howdy, can you blame me?, did you not SEE the bickering?, do we got injuries, if Drac could live off sarcasm he'd be fine, inspired by many lovely fics on this site, much snark, of freaking COURSE I wrote for this pairing, pride comes before the fall guys, science does not love Dracula, this is a direct response to that, though fabulous
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:27:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 17
Words: 88,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23955307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SinisterScribe/pseuds/SinisterScribe
Summary: As promised. Posted as soon as I finished it.Dracula is tempted with an offer from the shady funding behind the Harker institute when he finds out that they have something -rather someone- he so desperately wants. He's confident that he can make his way out of whatever trouble that they have in mind for him.Agatha, meanwhile, was having a bit of a shitty night even BEFORE she was dumped in a cell with the monster responsible for her death.Set in an AU after the opening of Episode 3. Inspired by ss9's 'Most of Them Stay Dead...'But, you know, with explosions because I am incapable of writing anything without at least a fist fight in it.
Relationships: Dracula/Agatha Van Helsing
Comments: 456
Kudos: 274





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I made a throwaway comment admitting to writing this on another fic and it was...politely asked that I update as soon as it was finished. 
> 
> So here we are. Much banter, blood, infighting, just plain fighting, explosions, monsters, torture and all that good clean family fun.

**Chapter 1 – For Want of a Wife**

****

**_The Harker Institute…_ **

Dracula looked up from the papers, that Frank Renfield was so insistent that he sign individually, when the door to his cell opened.

He was momentarily surprised that it was not Doctor Zoe Helsing that had come to see him once more but rather her lieutenant. What was her name again? Dracula’s keen gaze plucked the name from her credentials hanging from her lovely throat. He manufactured a smile from somewhere.

“Doctor Bloxam, a little ahead of schedule, it’s not yet eight o’clock.” Dracula straightened from his pose bent over the desk.

“Count Dracula, I have not come to release you.” Bloxam shifted a slim-line case under her arm. It appeared similar to the I-pad that Dracula had been given to play with but in a bookish cover. She dredged a smile herself, though in truth more a baring of teeth.

Still cross about the thumb being removed, he supposed.

“Oh? Come to offer me another taste? Such desperation.”

Bloxam snorted.

“ _No_. I have been authorised to present a counter offer instead.”

“Authorised?” Dracula hummed. “By these mysterious backers of questionable morality, hmm?”

“My client has made it perfectly clear that he has no wish to continue to tolerate the hospitality of the Harker Institute.” Frank offered his insincere smile and pushed his glasses up his nose.

“Your client doesn’t know everything the Institute and indeed its backers have to offer.” Bloxam spoke from behind her teeth and Dracula thought it might have been adorable if it weren’t so tedious.

“Needles, sunlight and incessant pestering.” Dracula drawled. “I’ve sampled all I intend to.”

“The Institute is prepared to offer you that which you’ve always wanted.”

“Pre-packaged meals? I think not. I prefer my cuisine a la carte.” Dracula propped himself negligently against the table, shooing the paperwork back towards Frank who had to scramble to keep it in order.

“A bride of your choosing.” Bloxam smiled in what he supposed she believed was a sweet manner.

“Literally billions out there for the taking.” Dracula waved one clawed hand negligently. He would have his brides, he had to keep himself amused after all.

“You misunderstand, Count,” Bloxam removed the tablet from under her arm and flipped the cover open, “the Institute would offer you a bride that you have _already_ chosen.”

Dracula frowned but found his curiosity piqued. He glanced at the clock, just turning eight, he had the time to indulge this posturing. He took the tablet from Bloxam’s injured hand, being sure to snag a talon on the pristine bandaging as he did so, and tapped on the white triangle on the screen. A matter of hours and he was already savvy enough to recognise a video when he saw one.

He watched events unfold upon the screen.

The picture was a patina of greens, blacks and whites. Similar to the camera he had handled upon the beach when he had first walked to shore. Night vision, they called it.

The scene was of a street, deserted in the depth of the night. Scarred buildings lined the road. A sign with a language that looked similar to Arabic leaned haphazardly over the doorway of what might have been a shop and Dracula realised he was watching imagery from a world away.

Twin pinpricks of white in the green heralded her.

The camera jostled, the operator catching sight of what Dracula had seen too and it zoomed in. Enlarging the image of the shadow that was unlike those surrounding it.

If Dracula had possessed the need to breathe, his lungs might well have hitched when the _very_ familiar angles of high cheekbones, long nose and sable lashed eyes greeted him.

“Agatha?” Dracula frowned, wary of being fooled. He glanced up at Bloxam and found her smirking at him. He paused the video. “I do not like to be trifled with. You cheapen Doctor Helsing by having her play dress up in such a fashion.”

“Keep watching.” Bloxam had that infuriating smirk. The one that said she knew things he didn’t and –well- he couldn’t have that.

Dracula indulgently pressed play once more and ticked off the differences between the woman he could see on the screen, the one that looked so like his Agatha, and the descendent that had met him on the beach.

She stood tall and unfettered by mortal pains such as those which cursed the blood in Zoe’s veins. Her gaze was keen, calculating and regarded the world around her with that same sardonic mirth that had been so delightful to him. She had been a fraction of his age and had taken in the world with the very same jaded cynicism he had earned through centuries of exposure.

What might be Agatha did so now, her mane of hair curling down her back. Dracula watched as the film showed her spooling that hair back, tucking it into a voluminous hood that shrouded her familiar features in shadow. The twin stars of her slit pupils glowing still from within the depths of the hood.

The camera panned back, showing the street again. Dracula watched with interest as a convoy of vehicles rounded the bend in the road and started along. Dracula was a warlord out of time but he still recognised the trappings of a man of power on the move.

The lead and rear vehicle had men perched upon the backs of the squat cars, weapons bristling in every direction and their heads on a swivel. The vehicle travelling in the middle of the convoy had blacked out windows and no doubt had yet more soldiers secreted inside.

Agatha stepped out of the alleyway she had been hiding in. She took in the scene at a glance, noting the three vehicles, ducked her head and _charged._

Dracula blinked, momentarily stunned, wondering what the hell she was thinking and realised what she was about when she tackled her target.

The first car.

Agatha hit the front grill of the military vehicle, both hands slamming down on the bonnet and crumpling the armoured plating there like cardboard. The car bounced downward, its suspension pushed to the limit and –when it bounced back up- Agatha ducked under the axle, hefting it with both hands and heaving with a meaningful bunch of her shoulders.

The car was thrust up on its back end, wheels spinning uselessly in the air and it toppled slowly on its tail for a moment before crashing backwards and landing with a crump on its roof. Blocking the street for the middle vehicle. Cutting off escape.

Agatha streaked away, faster than the camera could track in focus. The scene panned wider, searching for her, and zoomed in again when a blur of movement caught the cameraman’s eye. It focused again in time to see the last soldier of three being hauled from the back of a vehicle with a scream that did not register on the camera. No sound provided.

Gunfire erupted, muzzle flashes bursting magnesium bright on the night vision lens. The soldiers shot wildly into the dark. Plumes of mortar and shrapnel bursting from the buildings surrounding them, sparks flying from the hull of the toppled and crushed cars and Agatha was _everywhere._

Men disappeared into the dark and did not return. Their screams cut off abruptly. Active soldiers were twisted to lifeless bodies, spinning crumpled and broken to the ground. Their heads twisted entirely off in some cases, blood pooling beneath them on the dusty street. A few simply broke and ran and Agatha let them leave, more focused on her main target.

She appeared in another blur, shadows clinging around her like ink in water. With a silent snarl, her fingers punched into the door of the vehicle that held her target to the second knuckle. She wrenched and the entire door was ripped from its hinges. Agatha ducked behind it, shielding herself from the hail of gunfire that erupted from within the vehicle, then contemptuously slapped the muzzle of the gun away from her.

The hand that held the weapon went with it and Agatha dragged the screaming soldier from the vehicle. Her eyes blazed, she snapped his neck with a casual movement. She dropped him in place, letting him land on his head, and swarmed into the car.

The whole vehicle bounced and jostled at whatever occurred within. The windshield was kicked out by a stray foot which must have belonged to Agatha for no human would have the strength and a body was hurled out after it.

A man in what had to be a general’s uniform was unceremoniously tossed onto the street, landing badly on one shoulder, one of his legs quite clearly broken.

Agatha prowled out of the ruined windshield and onto the hood of the car. She crouched there, a severed head held by the hair in one hand. She raised an eyebrow, smirking when the general tried to stand.

She tossed the head aside.

Agatha dropped down off the car, slinking down like a cat onto the street and she stalked.

Dracula was entranced.

She was _beautiful_. The most dangerous thing he had ever seen. Wondrous creature. She crept soundlessly after her injured prey, letting him whimper and drag himself hand over hand to attempt to flee her.

Her boot came down on his ruined leg and Dracula swore he felt the echo of the scream even if he could not hear it.

Agatha seized the man by the sash he wore over one shoulder and ripped him up off his belly. She wrapped her arms around his torso, her lips brushing his ear as she spoke. Whatever she said _truly_ terrified him then because he began to struggle despite _knowing_ that it was futile.

Agatha grinned, just for a second, taking a moment to enjoy her kill, then she struck.

Dracula was treated to the glorious sight of her eyes swirling, pupils blown wide, her fangs lengthening and her claws shredding the general’s uniform. She was _perfect._

Her fangs bit deep, all the way to the gumline, in the meat of the general’s neck and Agatha savaged him, worrying the wound wider, tearing his throat clean open and gulping him down with deep, heaving, pulls.

It was in that moment of inattention on her part that they shot her.

Her body twisted, a dart pluming from one shoulder. She hissed, teeth bared, and yanked the projectile from her body but to no avail. Her legs were already buckling and she crashed down onto the street before she could even take one step in retreat.

Dracula snarled, his teeth bared and he lanced Bloxam with a look.

“As you can see, Agatha Balaur is alive –for lack of a better term- and well. That was a tranquiliser. She’s still alive. See? The team picked her up.” Bloxam nodded to the tablet which now had a crack racing across the screen courtesy of a careless flex of Dracula’s hands.

“Why?” He demanded, the veneer of the gentleman all but dust. The beast baring his teeth at her.

He did not _like_ the sight of the men manhandling her into restraints, tossing her into the back of a truck with screeched out of apparently nowhere to pick her up.

They left her massacre where they had fallen. The whole operation taking less than a minute. Dracula noted on some level that –whoever these people were- they were competent enough to be watched. Preferably from a distance.

“Leverage, of course. We want you to stay.”

“And you will use Agatha to get me to toe the line?”

“She documented herself that you will go _well_ out of your way in order to keep the company of one of your ‘brides’ and she was your last.” Bloxam shrugged a shoulder.

“What are your terms?” Dracula demanded.

“Sir- -!” Frank began but was silenced with a mere look from Dracula.

“I took the liberty of preparing a contract.” Bloxam tapped on her now cracked tablet and a PDF document appeared on the screen.

“Would you at least let me- -?”

“No.” Dracula accepted the tablet once more and scanned the document.

It mattered little. No human facility could contain him for long. Least of all one that wasn’t a home. He would get to Agatha and then they would leave. Together.

One way or another.

Dracula scrawled his signature on the bottom of the page and handed the tablet back to Bloxam.

“Take me to my bride.”

Bloxam smiled and it was her first true smile in Dracula’s presence.

“With pleasure.”

**_Later, An Undisclosed Location…_ **

Agatha bolted back to consciousness, her claws unsheathing and her fangs baring all in one move.

It was only superior reflexes that saved her from clattering her skull off the low ceiling of the tunnel she found herself in.

Agatha snarled, cranking her neck in order to prevent a concussion and settled herself into a more observant frame of mind. Her instincts were helpful in certain situations but none of those situations involved…whatever the hell had happened to her.

Agatha rumbled a low and displeased sound when she sifted through her memories attempting to discern what had occurred. She had not put herself here, she knew that much. There was a sterile scent to this lair that she had never encountered in the natural world and certainly not in the mountains of Syria which was definitely where she _had_ been.

Agatha examined the rock around her. Dark and slick. The earth beneath her had been placed there and she frowned at that. She rather preferred her mattress and cotton sheets but needs apparently must. Whoever had her, had been attempting to cater to her apparent needs. She would bet her left arm that the soil beneath her had hailed from her homeland of Holland.

Why did they always assume she was a vampire?

Agatha rolled into a crouch and started forward to where her nose told her the fresh air hailed from. She did not need to breathe often and could put herself into a state of suspended animation, but she _did_ need oxygen. Even if it was at a ridiculously lower rate than a human.

Padding silently on her fingers and toes, Agatha prowled through the low tunnel and grunted low in her throat in satisfaction when she saw a flush of light not far away. She halted, scenting carefully, and her eyes narrowed when she thought she recognised that scent.

Deep and masculine, spiced. Testosterone personified.

Agatha raised an eyebrow. A male. Fabulous.

Resisting the urge to roll her eyes, Agatha started forward again. If there was some idiot leech at the other end of this, she was going to enjoy boxing his brains out of his ears and leaving him crumpled in her wake as she took herself home. She had no idea why the idiots kept kidnapping her but it was always the same. They mistook her for a vampire and attempted what might laughingly be referred to as courting behaviour.

She was not a vampire and never had been. Try explaining that to them though.

It always ended the same, they tried to claim her, she let them close, ripped out their throats and then went on her merry way.

She wasn’t precisely hungry and her weapons had been removed (smart, whoever they were) but she wasn’t helpless either.

She was very nearly _always_ in the mood to tangle with an entitled male.

It was just a pity for them that it was never in the way they desired said entanglement.

Agatha stilled a moment when she rounded the bend in the tunnel and saw slick walls and a polished floor beyond. She was quite clearly in an underground facility. Whoever had captured her knew that she would destroy most other barriers to her freedom. The best way to cage her was to surround her by metric tonnes of rock that would take _time_ for even her claws to cut through.

So far, this vampire was proving to be smarter than the others but she had taken on much fiercer monsters than any modern undead and she wasn’t about to be cowed by some callow youth thinking with their genitals.

Agatha listened intently and could hear nothing.

No…a small tap.

A…finger? Claw? Against glass.

Agatha stalked closer to the end of the tunnel and could see more of the room beyond.

The walls were padded and white. The floor covered in a soft but glossy foam covering. Simple furnishings dotted the room, a curtained off area in one corner which she guessed housed bathing facilities of some sort (not trapped by a complete monster it would seem) and a television on one of the walls.

She did hope they had Netflix, she needed to catch up with Star Trek.

Agatha slunk cautiously to the very edge of the tunnel and peered around to make sure nobody was clinging to the walls in her blind spot.

She stilled when she saw him.

A huge bear of a male, in the cell with her, his dark head bent to some task. Probably reading as the television was off. He sat with his back to her on the only available couch and Agatha scented him carefully and silently.

He did not yet know she was there.

“Ah, you’re awake!”

Agatha went completely still when the vampire dropped whatever he was doing and twisted to sling one arm over the back of the couch. Showing her his face and abruptly letting her realise why his scent was so familiar.

Agatha bolted out of the tunnel, wishing powerfully to be on her own two feet at full height for this. She stared at him.

Dracula.

Count –fucking- _Dracula_ unfolded from the couch and grinned at her. Showing all of his many teeth. He tossed aside the tablet he had been using to read.

“Hello, wife.”

Agatha could only stare for the longest moment.

Then she said the only thing she thought appropriate.

“You have _got_ to be fucking kidding me.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which our antiheroes...do not play well with one another. 
> 
> Are we surprised? Not really.

**Chapter 2 – Reintroductions All Round**

“You have _got_ to be fucking kidding me.”

Dracula grinned impossibly wide at the first words she had said to him in over a century. Very pleased with her.

She was magnificent.

Even having been drugged and huckled from half a world away, Agatha commanded his attention as she always had. Since he had met her at the gates of her convent with her army of Sisters.

She looked worlds –or perhaps decades- away from her former career as a nun. Her hair was still long and curling, falling in a mane down her back. Her eyes were crystal blue, her features sharp enough to cut but softened by the full slant of her mouth and the long lashes of her wide eyes. She wore a form fitting black shirt that painted her from throat to wrist in silky soft fabric that hid the bloodstains admirably. Black trousers of a tougher more canvas like material clad her lower half and her boots had been removed leaving her in surprisingly pink socks.

He thought her delightful. Every single bite of her.

“Such _language_.” Dracula grinned. “And you called yourself a nun.”

“Typical.” Agatha seemed to get over her shock at seeing him remarkably quickly. Her hands half lifted and then slapped down onto her thighs. “Couldn’t you have stayed dead?”

“You don’t seem happy to see me.” Dracula prowled towards her and Agatha lifted her chin in a wordless challenge. Let him try.

“I was _busy_.”

“Busy getting shot in a moment of inattention whilst feeding. And you had the cheek to say _I_ had no self-control.” Dracula laid a manicured hand against his chest.

He wore a crisp white shirt and fitted black trousers. Polished dress shoes clad his feet but there was something…off about all of this.

“Where are we?” Agatha noted the fourth wall of what she now recognised to be a cell.

Clear glass took up that entire side of what she took to be a cavern hewn from rock, probably in the roots of a mountain. Deep underground had a feel to it. Her gaze narrowed. The glass was smooth and without seam. Whatever lay beyond it was entirely dark. Not even her night vision could pick out indistinct shapes.

“Where is the _door_?” Agatha twisted to look around the cell and confirmed that there was no visible door.

“They must have sealed the glass wall behind us.” Dracula waved negligently at the wall in question and then dropped his large hands into his pockets. “I did request that we not be disturbed any more than necessary.”

Agatha’s head whipped back around to face him, her hair swinging, and something very like dangers sparked in her eyes.

“You…requested?”

“Of course. Our dear hosts already had you, it was up to me to negotiate for better accommodations than they were going to offer.” Dracula lifted a powerful shoulder in a shrug and smirked for her. “Bearing in mind that their original offer had been a cadaver drawer.”

Agatha went very still, glancing about the room again and adding it all up.

Money. Lots of money. Staff and _time_ were required for a sealed facility this far underground. This meant planning and forethought. The type of planning that took decades. There was no branding anywhere. Not on the television, nor the books nor even the tablet Dracula had been toying with. Sleek, grey, minimalist.

Oh.

Oh no.

“And who might our illustrious hosts be?” Agatha shifted her weight and very much hoped she was wrong. It wasn’t often that she wished for such a thing and there were few organisations she hesitated to tangle with but…

“The Harker Institute.” Dracula supplied cheerfully.

Agatha shut her eyes on a wince and a low growl rumbled deep in her chest. It would have been just on the edge of human hearing had there been one nearby to hear it. Her fingers flexed, her claws extending and then sheathing once more as an act of will. She muscled her temper down under control and spoke carefully to her fellow prisoner.

“You are a _moron_.”

Dracula blinked, his smile slipping a little. She had never outwardly insulted him in such a manner.

She had called him a beast and a devil, a boy and a glutton without control but Dracula…well, he _was_ all of those things. Arguably. He was not a fool though. He could not remember the last time someone had dared to even mention such a thing within the range of his considerable hearing. He frowned down at Agatha, opening his mouth to speak but she was already hissing more venom at him.

“The _Harker_ _Institute_?!” Agatha’s narrow pupils flashed gold, her fangs clipping on each word. “Are you _completely_ devoid of even the most basic survival instinct?! A hundred and twenty years marinating in your own hubris and you couldn’t think to NOT walk into the lion’s den?”

“They had you.” Dracula snapped, his hands lifting from within his pockets, balling into fists. “Made a _point_ of taking you because they knew I’d come for my bride. Information given to them in your own fine hand.”

“I am no _bride_.” Agatha seethed. “Not yours. Not anyone’s.”

“I made you and you are mine. As you have ever been since I slaughtered all but you in your precious convent.”

Agatha ripped his throat out.

Dracula staggered back, one hand lifting towards his neck, watching as part of his carotid and a good chunk of his trachea sailed across the room to splatter against the padded wall below the television and slap to the floor in a growing puddle of crimson black ichor.

Dracula felt his knees wobble, his mouth working, staring at the quite important piece of his neck that had been so forcibly removed from him. Thick blood oozed from the wound, dripping sluggishly down over his chest. He was a little too focused on not folding up like a cheap suit to do anything to stop Agatha as she skirted him and headed for the boundaries of their prison.

“Arse.” She shouldered past him, sending him staggering and Dracula clutched at the back of the couch in order to remain upright.

Right, well, that had happened.

His mouth worked, a gurgling sound coming from his windpipe but no voice. She had ripped out his voicebox.

Dracula coughed a wet blurt of blood around an incredulous grin.

 _Magnificent_.

He gathered himself, forcing himself to stand free of the couch and carefully cross the room to the handful of meat that was missing from his throat.

It hurt, of course it did, but she had not severed his spine or even damaged the nerves there. Not even close to fatal to an undead abomination such as himself. He would be able to plug the missing flesh back into the gaping wound and force it to heal properly. After a day or two he wouldn’t even bear a scar from her claws.

All in all, he was mostly impressed.

He had barely even seen her move. He who could cross rooms in less than a blink, see the individual beats of a fly’s wings, count raindrops as they fell. He knew that he was no slouch in the speed department and she had struck him so quickly he had been entirely unprepared to even duck out of her reach.

Dracula scooped up the remains of his neck, taking a moment to figure out which way up it was supposed to go, picked off a bit of fluff, and then pressed the whole mess back into place. He winced, pinching the ragged edges of flesh together to heal them, and resisted the _strong_ urge to cough as blood trickled down his airway and into his lungs. That was going to be unpleasant to clear.

It was several minutes of carefully sealing the wound with the pressure from his own fingers, aligning things and carefully breathing in and out before he dared to clear his throat. Blood filled his mouth and he gulped it back down again, no point in letting it go to waste. He risked a very careful and gentle cough and turned to regard his wife once more.

Agatha was at the base of the glass wall, examining the lowest edge of it where it met the padded floor. Her bloodied claws picked at the join but she abandoned that as he watched and rose to her full height.

He watched as she pressed her hands to the glass and the muscles over her back and shoulders bunched. She exerted further and further pressure against the wall. Her fingertips and knuckles turning white, the muscles of her arms and back standing out in sharp relief, before she gusted out an annoyed breath and relaxed.

The glass had not even creaked.

She swiped out with one set of claws and gave a low growl when she barely even scuffed whatever transparent material it was that caged them here.

Dracula cleared his throat once more and frowned when she continued to examine the glass wall rather than turn to look at him.

“Rude.” His voice was a croaking rasp, his vocal cords still adjusting to their trip outside his neck.

Agatha’s shoulders tensed a fraction and then she shook her head, hair tumbling over her slim shoulders, and went back to examining her cell. Searching for weaknesses.

“You ignore me, dear one?” Dracula chuckled and his voice sounded as something dead. Not that he should be overly surprised, he was dead, but he usually sounded a little more refined than a snarling wolf.

Usually.

Agatha had moved to examining the padded walls. Her hands tracking over the soft panels, pressing here and there, listening intently for what he did not know.

He cautiously approached when she appeared to find what she was searching for on one of the panels. Her fingers spread wide, trailing over the edges of the panel and she hummed mostly to herself before digging her fingers in to a seam only she could see.

Dracula cautiously approached, prudently staying out of clawing reach, and watched with interest as she peeled the panel off the wall to reveal a small inset behind it. She ducked her head inside and looked up, cursing softly before withdrawing. She turned to glare at him, blaming him for this also it would seem, and he smirked because what else could he do?

“You smiled the last time you were forced into a box as well.” She noted on a grumble and Dracula’s smile dropped.

“Hmm, yes, explosives were a nasty trick.”

“Said the devil to the nun.” Agatha snarked at him, seemingly unfazed by the fact that he was still larger and stronger than she if not apparently faster. “Could you go and stand elsewhere? Your reek is…repellent this close.”

“Repellent?” Dracula blinked as she skirted around him once more, tracking over to the opposite wall of the cell. He twisted to watch her go. “Reek?!”

“A century in brine has improved your faculties, I see.” Agatha prodded at this wall too, grunting in annoyance when she could sense nothing save for unyielding rock face beyond. Perhaps also steel plating.

None of those things were impassable to an immortal when they were of a mind to be places elsewhere but it would take _time_. Time that she doubted the Harkers were going to let her have. She had no doubt, despite the fact that she could not see it yet, that there was some form of malevolent deterrent in here to keep her from simply tearing the cell apart to get to freedom.

“I do not reek.” Dracula defended himself.

“Quite powerfully, I’m afraid. All musk and ego.” Agatha’s mouth twisted to show her distaste at the scent and was heartened when his mouth actually dropped open in shock at the insult. He quite clearly resisted the urge to sniff himself.

“Scent of a male in his prime.” Dracula recovered himself after a moment.

“As you say.” Agatha widened her eyes and tilted her head as if humouring him and turned back to her careful poking and prodding.

There had to be a weak point. Every cell had a weak point. Escape was simply a matter of time and observation.

She hoped.

She spun back to him when her quest found nothing more than the narrow chute across the room which she imagined would be used to drop food in for them.

“You really walked in here willingly?”

“Of course.” Dracula shrugged his shoulders. “They had you.”

“So?” She couldn’t parse that.

“They quite evidently didn’t intend on having you round for tea and crumpets, my dear one. Besides, I wanted to see how my bride had turned out. Hardly any of my experiments grow to maturity without me to feed them.”

“Let’s just say that we’re a breed apart.” Agatha clipped at him, bridling at the inference that she was in any way beholden to him.

His bite may well have triggered whatever it was that had changed her into an immortal but she truly was _quite_ different to him. She was not a mindless killing machine nor a glutton. She was in control and did not suffer from the blood lust that plagued him so.

That and many other differences that she cared not at all to share with him. Let them come as an unpleasant surprise.

“What do you mean?” Dracula reached out to touch her cheek with one finger and wisely snatched it out of reach when she turned her head and snapped at him with clipping fangs. “Behave.”

“No.” Agatha spoke with the thrum of a growl in her voice.

“You are as undead as I. Let us not fight. It will only waste energy better spent in more enjoyable pursuits.”

“No. No and I highly doubt there is a pleasure on this Earth that might compare to me twisting your head clean off your unseemly neck.”

“Nothing about me is unseemly.” Dracula snapped. He was growing rather tired of these thuggish insults.

The Agatha that he had known has always indulged him in witty banter. The parry and riposte of verbal sparring always undercut by the rules of gentlemanly behaviour. She had respected him as an opponent if not as a man.

That appeared to no longer the case.

He frowned when something else occurred to him.

“What do you mean, no?”

“Which part of the monosyllable did you not understand?” Agatha batted wide eyes at him and he couldn’t help but bare his teeth. His fangs were larger than hers after all.

Agatha grinned, entirely unrepentant.

How un-nun-like of her.

“I posited that we are as undead as one another and you denied me.”

“Certainly not the last time that’s going to happen.” Agatha murmured seemingly mostly to herself and Dracula continued doggedly.

“You are a vampire. By definition; undead.”

“Oh yes, for you are never wrong.” Agatha let her head tilt back with her eye roll and bared her throat to him.

It was then that he noticed it. His gaze dropping to her neck as a matter of habit and he froze when he saw it.

There.

A pulse. A thrum in the blood vessels of her neck. A corresponding thump from deep within her chest that came from her heart. Not a human beat, nor a human pulse, but definitely there. She breathed too. Not only when she needed the air to speak. She inhaled and exhaled not of habit, she was far too old to still cling to such human tendencies, but out of necessity.

“How?” His fingers touched to her throat and she snarled.

She was fast, very fast, but he was not surprised this time.

Dracula lunged backwards, avoiding her wild striking claws. He yanked his hand from her neck, his claws catching on the skin there. Blood beading in the wake of his talons.

His eyes flooded red on instinct, hunger roaring up within him, his fangs baring.

It was a moment of inattention on his part. He had no intention of feeding upon her, not yet at least, but Agatha didn’t appear to pick up on that.

She _roared_.

Dracula’s muscles tensed on an instinct he had long thought deceased at the sound of a super predator challenging him. Agatha’s pupils blazed gold, fangs crowding her mouth and her claws extending into steely talons. She reacted in kind to his threat display and then some.

He caught the hand that swung for his face but was unprepared for the heel that rammed into his sternum almost simultaneously.

Air was crushed from his lungs, his ribs snapping like twigs as he was punted backwards. Stars burst behind his eyes when his skull rattled off the glass wall of the cell.

Temper finally roused, truly hurt and startled for the first time since the fall of the British Empire, Dracula bared all of his fangs with a preternatural scream of his own. He shoved off the wall, hunching his huge shoulders and rolling them in preparation for a fight. If it was rough and tumble she wanted then he would willingly oblige her. He would put up with her temper tantrum for a while, she was his favourite, his best bride by far, but even his patience had limits.

Agatha, not intimidated in the slightest at his hulking strength, hissed in response. Her hair wild, her fangs bared and her claws curling at her sides.

Dracula growled, intent on cowing her without physically flattening her. He would if he had to, but he would prefer not to.

He might have. He very well might have crushed her to dust in a fit of pique. She was his favourite but he had killed his favourites before. In fact, in hindsight, he probably would have.

The hundred thousand volts of electricity that coursed through his body, burning him from the inside out, however…

That stopped him cold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, guys, thanks so much for all your comments and feedback on the first chapter. I've never been in a fandom this close to it forming, I guess so it's a lot more closeknit than I am used to and a lot of you appear to know or know of one another. Thanks for welcoming me with all your reading, kudos and comments. 
> 
> Feedback is much appreciated and I'm glad that this is a little bit of entertainment for everyone with all the wildness going on outdoors. 
> 
> Hang in there, folks!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a longer chapter this time. 
> 
> The revelation of our mysterious hosts!

**Chapter 3 – Shock to the System**

Dracula’s eyes snapped open and he sat up all in one move.

A low sound wheezed from him when his entire body protested at the movement. Pain wracked him from all angles. It took him long moments to place the sensation and it was from a dimly remembered human memory that he had thought done with long ago.

War. He felt as if he had gone to war. The all over body ache that could only come from hours on horseback, swinging a great sword, wearing full armour. An effort that had reduced him at times to a trembling wreck when he had been but a mere human. His limbs leaden and his head fogged with fatigue.

“Ow.” He decided after a moment.

Still, nothing was hanging off or in need of being pressed back into place so he set his mind to more important things.

“Agatha.” He lunged to his feet when he saw her prone on the floor, he staggered once, his body uncoordinated and clumsy, but made his way to her stubbornly. He would deny it if it asked, but he crashed rather than lowered himself to his knees beside her. “Agatha? Agatha, wake up.”

Dracula was actually hesitant for a moment to touch his bride, she had a habit of clawing and biting after all (not to mention kicking and screaming) but he needed to ascertain that she was still whatever version of alive it was that she found herself in.

Lifting a clawed hand, he patted at one high cheekbone in a gentle but firm manner. He measured the pulse at her throat, slow, about two beats a minute but that meant little to him when he had no basis of comparison. Was that too slow for her now? Too fast? He would need to ask if she woke.

When. When she woke.

“Come on, beloved. Wakey-wakey.” Dracula lifted his thumb to his mouth, nipping a small wound on the pad and smeared his dark blood across her lips.

Agatha jolted into consciousness, eyes snapping open and inhaling deeply on a low thrum of sound that resembled more a purr than a growl. Her tongue traced over her lip, sucking his taste from her mouth and she glared up at him, her nose wrinkling.

“You taste as pungent as you smell.”

“Still capable of spitting venom, I see. You’re fine.” Dracula sat back on his heels, very close to being relieved and watched her as she laboured upright.

Agatha rested her weight on her hands, groaning at the same pain that seemed to assail him and scooted away from him until she could prop herself against one of the padded walls. She let her head fall back but her eyes never left him. Watching him for further shenanigans.

Dracula sealed the small wound on his thumb and smirked at her. He had not at all missed the way she had gulped him down when given the opportunity nor how she sucked her lip even now as if chasing the flavour. For someone who protested the moniker of vampire, she certainly seemed to have a penchant for blood.

Her pupils were blown, blue eyes swallowed with the peculiar golden shimmer that seemed to reside deep in her eyes, and a flush scored high on her cheeks though he supposed that could be from the fight they’d almost had.

Speaking of.

“What did they do?” Dracula expected her to know. She had evidently spent more time in this modern world than he had. She must have seen it come about, after all.

That and, he would admit, she had always favoured the sciences more than he.

“Deterrent.” She murmured after a moment. She muscled down a wince and worked one of her arms carefully. “Must channel it through the floor.”

“Channel what?” Dracula watched in fascination as she reached beneath the neckline of her shirt to the shoulder that bothered her.

With a wince, she pulled something free and lifted a small metallic object from under her shirt. It smoked slightly in her hand. She tossed it carelessly aside and Dracula snatched it out of the air. Studying it.

It was small, perhaps the length of the tip of his thumb. Cylindrical on one end and made from a brassy metal. Scores marked the barrel of the metal but the end had mushroomed outward. As if it had split apart after being hurled against something denser than it. It took him a moment to place it.

“A bullet?” He looked up at her.

“Hmm. Vampire thugs are not the best shot but even they can get lucky.” Agatha worked her arm once more, moving more easily this time. “In answer to your first question; electricity. Several thousand volts of it, judging by how my everything aches.”

“Electricity?” Dracula hummed.

He knew it powered everything in this new world he found himself in. Made every home a palace in comparison to the technological squalor of the centuries he had hailed from. He had not realised it had been weaponised.

“It’s difficult to affect creatures such as you and I. Being undead comes with the added advantage of becoming nigh unto unstoppable by conventional means but our bodies still need to transmit signals in order to move. The same electricity that carries those signals through our nervous system can be disrupted by voltage of a more powerful nature.” Agatha explained. “It makes sense that they would have some way of separating us when we fight.”

“They didn’t do anything the first time you stropped your claws.” Dracula all but pouted, he felt rather ill looked after by his hosts. Though he had to admit that he did not like the expression of obvious pain on Agatha’s face when she tried to shift to a more comfortable position.

“You didn’t retaliate. You’re the more valuable to them of the two of us and the only thing keeping you in a cooperative frame of mind is me. If you kill me, in a typical display of instant gratification to the every whim that enters your head, then they lose their leverage.” Agatha swept fluff from the knee of her trousers and bared her teeth a little at the notion.

Dracula, as disconcerted as he was by the content of the conversation, was glad that Agatha was talking rather than attempting to remove pieces of him. Honestly, he had no idea why he was supposed to be the more violent of the two of them. She was the one that had attempted murder on his personage far more often than he had her.

“I am not entirely out of control.” He defended himself. He continued at her disdainful snort of disagreement. “I would not have killed you.”

“I agree. Though you certainly would have tried.” Agatha hummed. “However, we find ourselves facing a common enemy. It behoves us to turn our aggression toward them rather than at each other.”

“You propose an alliance?” Dracula’s mouth quirked in a smile. She always had been such a clever little thing.

“The enemy of my enemy and all that.” Agatha waved a hand dismissively. “That and I’d rather not be fried repeatedly by our hosts.”

“Hmm, yes, might well be best to appear to be on more friendly terms.” Dracula rocked forward onto his hands and knees and prowled towards her.

Agatha stiffened, her lips lifting from her teeth on a silent growl, but she steadied herself when he did little more than sit beside her to lean against the wall. He was in her peripheral but it was acceptable. He was very sure not to actually touch her…but he was also very close.

Agatha wrinkled her nose a little but made no further comment.

Dracula huffed.

“Do I truly smell so offensive to you?”

“Your scent is…overpowering.” Agatha admitted after a moment. In truth, she did not find it a terrible smell to be subjected to. He smelled rich and decadent in the way the finest spices and most expensive chocolates do. His scent was deep, male and coiled around her like living smoke. It filled her head and made her irritable but it was not –entirely- unpleasant.

She would not share that with him though.

“I shall bathe once our plotting is concluded.” Dracula made a show of examining his long fingernails and pointedly did not move an inch away from her. “Though I see no real need to have escaping so high on the itinerary. It’s not entirely unpleasant here.”

“The company leaves something to be desired.” Agatha was watching the glass wall across from them.

Something about it niggled her. It was not reflective as a two way mirror would be though whatever was on the other side was darker than even her keen night vision could make out. Sometimes it seemed like she could pick up movement beyond the pane but other times she was convinced it was a trick of what little light bled from their cage beyond.

“Agatha, Agatha, Agatha, I know you missed me really.”

“My aim has had over a century to improve, Count. Our inevitable clash has been postponed, not dismissed.”

“Why waste time and energy fighting when there are so many other things we could be doing to one another?” Dracula grinned for her.

“Morals, ethics, integrity, basic common decency, the indelible knowledge of my own self-worth…” Agatha began to list, ticking each one off her fingers.

“Enough.” He growled and she smirked.

“Besides, as pleasant as you think this all is, make no mistake that we are imprisoned and at the mercy of people that make you look positively well balanced. I suspect we shall be left to settle, wear one another out with our bickering, then the experiments shall begin.” Agatha’s mouth twisted and her tone darkened. “I am surprised to realise, Count, that I wish such things not even on you.”

“Concern, for little old me? I’m touched.”

“In the head, perhaps.” Agatha huffed out a breath. “Tell me what you know of our cell.”

“Living area, bathing, food elevator and observation deck.” Dracula pointed to the couch, the curtained off bathing area, the panel she had ripped off the wall to reveal the chute beyond and finally the glass wall. He indicated the tunnel she had crawled from. “I believe you are familiar with the bedroom.”

Agatha’s claws flexed against her upraised knee and her eyes narrowed.

“What?” He knew her, despite their time apart, he carried her in his veins. He knew well when she was worrying a problem like a dog on a bone.

“Observation. That’s not a two way mirror.”

“Two way…?”

“Mirrored on one side so the observed cannot see the observer.” Agatha indicated the fourth wall of their cell. “If this was such glass then you would see your own beloved reflection rather than the darkness beyond.”

“I would prefer to gaze upon your reflection, I think.”

Agatha ignored that and pushed towards her feet. She padded across the room towards the glass wall and lifted her hand to rest her fingertips against the glossy surface. She was aware that Dracula was right behind her, closer than she would prefer, but she ignored that for now.

“Can you see anything beyond?”

“Simply darkness.” Dracula shrugged his large shoulders and he was so broad that Agatha could see the way he framed every inch of her in their dim reflection.

She had no idea why he hated looking on his own reflection so much, he looked as he always did to her, but that was a problem filed away for later.

“Darkness that not even nocturnal predators can see into.” Agatha pressed her palms against the glass again. “We, like felines, cannot see in true darkness. There must be the smallest fraction of light for our eyes to use…there is none beyond.”

“So they switched the lights off.” Dracula moved to stand behind her and propped one fist against the glass, leaning closer and peering into the dark. Now that she had brought his attention to it, it did seem incongruent.

“The light from our cell should illuminate _something_.” Agatha murmured and then rapped her fist sharply against the pane of glass.

They both stilled when, rather than the hollow thunk of a fist meeting a window, it was the higher plink of something solid beyond. 

“Not hollow. Not a room. Why have a window that shows nothing?” Dracula knocked on the glass himself with a trifle more strength. The glass didn’t even creak under the pound of his knuckles that would have dented plate steel. “No mere glass, either. It must be several inches thick.”

_WHAM!_

Agatha jerked in surprise when something _huge_ slammed into the other side of the glass. Her feet didn’t even touch the floor as Dracula seized her by the waist and shoved her behind his bulk. His fangs bared, hissing at the creature beyond.

A huge hand with pallid skin and large enough to span Dracula’s entire torso in its talons clapped against the glass. The glass _did_ creak then. A second hand thundered against the glass, causing Dracula to flinch again. Black eyes the size of dinner plates glimmered from a flattened face. Full lips of a lurid red parted to reveal serrated fangs as long as his forearm and a white tongue streaked rubbery and squeaking against the window of their cell.

“What the fuck is that?” Dracula’s voice was hoarse from holding back a growl.

Whatever it was, it was far larger than he and seemed infinitely stronger.

“Looks like a Prada shirt to me.” Agatha drawled. “Cease your male posturing and let me look.”

Dracula hesitated a moment, every instinct he had telling him to keep himself between his bride and this…monster, but she was correct. She could see nothing behind him and the glass was holding. Whatever it was on the other side of the glass seemed interested rather than aggressive.

Perhaps it simply wished to look at them as they did it.

Dracula reluctantly released Agatha and she stepped around him without a second’s hesitation.

“Oh.” She jagged to a halt when confronted with…whatever the hell it was on the other side of the glass.

“You don’t recognise it?” Dracula resisted the strong urge to yank her behind him once more. She had seen it, that was what she had requested, no need to cavort in front of it.

“I do. I have seen pictures, video, though never in the flesh.” Agatha stepped closer to the glass, her head tilting as she studied what she could see on the other side. “You would know it as a mermaid, in your time.”

“That is no maid.” Dracula huffed something like a laugh.

“Just as you are no gentleman.” Agatha shot him a look over her shoulder and lifted her hand to the glass, pressing her palm to the other side of the creature’s own massive hand.

Agatha studied the delicate webbing that spanned each finger, the claws that curled, creaking against the glass even though she could now tell it was several inches thick. Those fangs, as transparent and numerous as glass shards, flashed. Gills fluttering at the corner of the mermaid’s powerful jaws. Her eyes were huge and liquid black, evolved to take advantage of far less light than even Agatha or Dracula could use to navigate the dark.

Agatha felt a brush against her sixth sense, a frisson against the forefront of her mind. Her eyes drifted closed.

“Her name is…I cannot pronounce it for you.” Agatha let the mermaid introduce herself. Their connection was muted through the glass as it was. She could feel the thrum of the huge creature’s pulse thudding through the glass against her own much slower heartbeat. “She’s hungry, always hungry, she misses…I don’t know.”

Agatha opened her eyes, relaxing her focus when her head began to pound. The mermaid, the creature, was ancient and vast. Her mind just as much as her body. It was akin to trying to hold a conversation with a howling football crowd. Too much noise, too much nuance to each syllable. Just too much.

“How…big is she?” Dracula was peering into the darkness that shrouded the water on the other side of the glass.

Huge eyes, larger than his own skull, flicked to his and his question was answered. The mermaid blinked once and a thrum buffeted the glass on the other side.

Light, red light, bloomed through the water like clouding blood. As many pinpoints of light as there were stars in the sky shimmered to life along the vast length of the creature in the tank.

The red light revealed a long and lean torso. A secondary set of gills lifting and falling on the curve of the creature’s ribcage where a human might house lungs. It was vaguely humanoid and reminiscent of classical images of mermaids in that it had a primate like shaped head and torso to the hips. Then the nod to anything mammalian gave way to the raw power of an apex predator of the ocean depths. The mermaid was easily larger than an orca with a great deal more teeth. She spanned the window of Agatha and Dracula’s cell from one end to the other. Her tail was more serpentine than whale or fish like. Resembling that of an eel more than anything else. A clouding mane of something very like hair billowed like a storm around her head and she cocked her head at Dracula.

He bared his teeth and stopped when she did the same. Hers were much larger after all.

“You are beautiful.” Agatha grinned, pressing her hands to the glass once more.

“Remember that she is hungry.” Dracula warned, unnerved. He had not come across anything that might be a threat to his existence since…well, since Agatha.

“Oh, she’d eat me in a heartbeat but then, so would you.” Agatha shot him a look. “She at least would have the decency to simply devour my meat and bones rather than consume my very soul.”

“Flatterer.” Dracula smirked for her and stiffened when the ‘mermaid’ shrieked her talons over the other side of the glass.

Whatever antagonism Agatha reined in to maintain their uneasy truce, the mermaid seemed to pick up on.

“Perhaps, when she grows hungry enough to break this glass, I shall have the pleasure of watching her devour you first.”

“Setting the bar low, I see.”

“Foolish boy,” Agatha scolded him, “do you not see? We are beneath the ocean itself. Should we attempt to dig our way out, we shall only find ourselves crushed by the weight of the water above us. At best.”

“I will admit that, if that is the case, then this prison is better thought out than I first suspected.” Dracula cautiously stepped closer to the glass, his every move watched by the mermaid that seemed so fascinated by Agatha.

He peered into the murk of the water, using the red light from the mermaid to see what he could see. He looked in every direction and had to agree with Agatha’s assessment. Water this dark had to be near to the floor of the ocean. Perhaps as deep as a mile below the surface. He couldn’t see even a glimmer of the surface beyond. Steely netting was visible at one edge indicating a cage within a larger body of water rather than a tank sealed off from light.

On the one hand, the darkness brought comfort to Dracula. He was so far beyond the reach of the sun that he would never burn. On the other…it was a long way to the freedom he had maintained he would retake as soon as he had Agatha.

Not to mention the huge fish on the other side of the glass that would snap him up as a pike would a minnow should he somehow find himself outside his own cell.

Hmm. Less than ideal.

He was forcibly jolted from his thoughts when light suddenly flashed on beyond the glass wall.

The mermaid shrieked, a high pitched whale like sound, spinning over her own tail and disappearing into the dark. Her light dimmed and she disappeared into the murk.

The lights used to drive her away slowly dimmed from the magnesium bright flare that had scared off the monster of the deep but a sullen blue white glow remained.

“Of course they would.” Agatha murmured to herself and turned to face the cell at large. Braced for whatever might be levelled at them next.

The television blinked on.

Agatha padded cautiously closer when the screen flashed white and black words appeared.

_INTO THE TUBE_

“What…?” Dracula didn’t have the time to ask ‘what tube’ before a low hiss drew his attention to the ceiling.

He stepped between the emerging tube that slid down out of the ceiling and Agatha without further thought. The last thing that had surprised them in here had fried their nerves, in places almost literally, he was in no hurry to have her subjected to more of the same. Nor himself, but he was confident still that he could take more of a beating than Agatha could.

The tube was made of a similar material to that of the glass wall of their cell. It was curved and perfectly transparent. It was broad enough for one of them to stand within it. The purpose of it becoming clear when the tube touched down to the floor and rotated slowly, opening on one side as if to admit one of them.

“They mean for me to leave you?” Dracula spoke to Agatha.

The television blinked again. The text changing.

_DRACULA INTO THE TUBE_

“T’would appear so.” Agatha murmured though she didn’t sound entirely comfortable with the idea.

“And should I refuse to be parted from you?” Dracula as much spoke to Agatha as he did to the people he knew had to be listening.

A low hum began, emanating from seemingly everywhere. A charge filled the air, making the hairs on his arms and the back of his neck rise in a response he hadn’t suffered from since he’d been alive. Dracula bared his teeth at the stench of ozone that began to build.

The inference was clear. Into the tube or they are both punished.

“Very well.” Dracula held up his hands in surrender and turned to look at Agatha. “Don’t play with the neighbours whilst I’m gone.”

Agatha studied his face, as if she was seeing it for the last time and nodded almost absently.

“Worry not, wife. Remember that they want me functional.” He grinned for her and felt a frisson of disquiet go through him when he ran a finger along her jaw to her chin and she didn’t even attempt to bite it off.

“I would say ‘god speed’ but…” She lifted a shoulder in a shrug, her eyes looking up at the ceiling, where the tube met the roof of their cell.

“God isn’t here. I am.” Dracula reminded her.

“For now.” Agatha murmured, her eyes dropping to meet his.

_NOW, COUNT_

The television reminded them and Dracula broke away. He turned on his heel and stepped up onto the platform at the base of the tube. He stood patiently whilst it hissed and the transparent hull rotated around him, sealing him inside.

Agatha stepped closer as the tube began to retract into the ceiling once more. Her lips moved, forming words he could not hear but he attempted to read them from her lips.

_Good luck._

Dracula held her gaze as he was pulled up into the ceiling and towards their captors. His eyes remained locked on hers until she disappeared from view. It was only then that he turned to look about himself.

The glass tube ascended into darkness. Cold pressed in on him from all sides and Dracula surmised that he had been drawn up into the water that encased their cell. He was surrounded by an impenetrable void of light all around him. The tube in which he stood was lit dimly but it was as a candle to the coliseum for all the illumination such meagre light offered.

Up and up and up he travelled. He had no notion of how quickly he was moving for there were no markers by which to gauge his speed. His stomach swooped a little as it did in elevators in the Harker Institute proper so he supposed he must be moving at least as quickly as one of those.

He startled when he suddenly broke into light again. The tube passed into another building from the chill of the water and slowed to a halt immediately. It hissed, rotating to allow him his freedom and Dracula looked about himself cautiously.

“Hello?” He stepped out of the tube and down onto the tiled floor.

Non-descript white tiling. The floor was bevelled slightly leading to a central drain.

Ah. Not precisely welcoming.

“Doctor Helsing? Here for more blood?” Dracula called out into the chamber, his voice echoing back at him from all angles off of the utilitarian tiling that covered every inch of the space.

He refused to be intimidated when he found the only furniture in the room to be a steel table, again bevelled for drainage, with what appeared to be five points of restraint. A cage that looked precisely big enough to hold his head at the fifth point.

“Not exactly five star.” Dracula hummed, letting his claws trace over the steel of the table, peeling away a corkscrew sliver of the metal. “I shall be writing unfavourably on TripAdvisor.” Dracula continued to talk to his unseen hosts.

He had seen no one since being put into another box of his home soil and transported here. Wherever here was. They had filled the box with something, a hiss of gas that had stolen his senses and left him in a torpor until he had come to himself in the cell far below.

So he knew they had the ability to sedate him and had not yet done so. He wondered at the why of it. The question fled when a doorway opened with another muted hiss and Dracula spun to see a human shape filling the door.

“Ah, lunchtime already?” He grinned though it became fixed when the figure stepped into the room and revealed itself to be…something else.

Not another creature. Not a monster like the mermaid far below but something else altogether more unnerving.

A machine. A human shaped machine.

“An automaton?” Dracula swept aside his unease. It made perfect sense after all.

He would rend whichever human came into this room limb from limb just to amuse himself. Drink his fill and then attempt to figure a way to bring the remains back to Agatha if the taste was a pleasing one. They were wise to put a bloodless creature in here with him.

However, bloodless did not mean that this toy could not be broken like every other –what did they call it- plastic thing in this modern world.

“Fascinating.” Dracula crossed the room and peered at the automaton.

It stood level with his own height, a matt black face plate in place of any human features. It had two arms and stood on two legs to the arms ended in what appeared to be metallic claws like that of some sort of horrid shellfish. The head did not have a neck to speak of but rather rose from what passed to be the torso of the machine in a turret like formation.

“I am _very_ impressed.” Dracula spoke to whoever was listening. “It moved very well for a machine. I confess I did not think that engineering had reached this level. I know from my own experiments that the simple human gait is incredibly difficult to mimic without sufficient –what do you call it- processing power?”

Dracula continued to narrate to his hosts and reached out to tap at the ‘head’ of the machine. He poked at it and it rocked back a little but did not topple. In fact, it mimicked his motion and reached up with one claw as if to prod him in return.

Dracula chuckled, delighted, and waited for it to poke at him.

He stiffened when the clawed clamp on the end of the automaton’s arm snapped vicelike around his neck.

Dracula’s hands clamped down onto the machine’s arm and he wrenched with all of his strength.

Nothing.

Dracula grunted, or he would have had the air been allowed to pass through his scarred throat, and his feet kicked when he was lifted clean off the floor. The world spun, the ceiling cartwheeling over his head and stars burst in front of his eyes when he was slammed unceremoniously down onto the steel table he had so disdained not moments prior.

Dracula gargled something that might have hoped to be a roar. He slashed at the machine with his claws, pummelling it with his fists and kicking out with his legs.

Not a dent, not a scratch. He didn’t even slow it.

Another machine appeared alongside the first, this one a slightly differing shade of grey. The whirr of servos and the hiss of hydraulics pressing in around the Count as he was forced down onto the table.

Another and then another machine appeared, grasping him with those cruel vices on their arms and forcing his arms and legs downward. Something popped in his struggles, his shoulder suddenly loose in its socket and he snarled at the pain. His ankle crackled like an apple that had been trodden on as it was forced into one of the restraints but it was not in Dracula to simply lie down and be caged.

He struggled, surprised when he realised the roars filling the room were coming from his own throat. He snapped and bit at whatever he could reach but his fangs glanced harmlessly from the toughened polymer hull of the machines as uselessly as his claws had.

One by one his arms and legs were bound. It took no less than three of the metallic brutes to force his head back down onto the table, two of them to force his head and neck flat and the third to slam the skull shaped cage over his face to muzzle him.

The pincer of the fourth machine clipped around what appeared to be bolts and rotated swiftly, screwing the cage into place. Dracula roared, throwing himself against his bonds and cursing them in all the languages he knew both past and present.

Blood streamed from his wounds where he had spiralled a bone clean out of one of his arms, cut even his toughened skin against the steel cuffs that bound him and the ragged stumps where he had shattered his claws against the machines that pinned him so.

He was livid, enraged. They _dare_ manhandle him in such a manner. Changed times or not, he was still a prince and deserved a certain level of respect. If he would not be given it then he would carve it out of their metallic flesh. One inch at a time.

The tenor of Dracula’s struggles changed only when the tools were brought into view. Row upon row of shining stainless steel implements lain out gleaming and wicked sharp on one wheeled tray after another.

The high pitched whirr of a handheld circular saw burring to spinning life succeeded in silencing the Count for a moment because he had no idea what he was looking at.

His screams changed entirely when the saw lowered, biting through his shirt, his flesh, tearing into his bones. Sending blood splattering up into the blank bucket faces of the machines that held him down.

Dracula screamed beyond all endurance. He screamed as his sternum was sawn in half, as his ribs were cracked apart and his innards peeled out like the shucking of a prawn. He screamed until his throat was torn, until his eyes were completely red with agony.

He screamed even through one of the machines stapling his mouth shut.

In fact, he only stopped screaming when they removed his lungs. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, we still don't know what Agatha is, but I promised robots and robots ye shall have. 
> 
> This is why it's important to read the tags, children. 
> 
> Poor, Drac. He does suffer in this. 
> 
> Hope y'all are still loving it!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feh, it's tuesday somewhere.

**Chapter 4 - Picking Up the Pieces**

Agatha's claws ripped into the padding up near one of the light fittings, latched onto the speaker, and wrenched it from its housing.

Silence finally, _finally,_ bloomed throughout the cell.

Agatha dropped down from her hold on the ceiling, hanging there from the claws of one hand, and landed hard on the floor. Her legs folded up beneath her and she crumpled downward to sit huddled in the centre of the cell. 

She shivered all over like a racehorse run ragged. Her long limbs trembled and her breathing was choppy and harsh. Panic threatened to clamber up out of her throat in a spill of wretched whimpers but she swallowed it down and refused to give her captors the satisfaction. She was Agatha Van Helsing. Not some mere leech for them to toy with.

That being said, she was going to _enjoy_ destroying the Harkers when the opportunity arose.

Still, for the moment, she savoured the silence.

The screams had finally stopped.

Dracula had been gone for less than twenty minutes before they had begun to pipe his screams down into the cell. She had been padding around, investigating her new environment and had nearly jumped out of her damn skin when his shrieks of rage and agony had been blasted seemingly from every corner of the room.

The noise had come from _everywhere_. Hidden speakers tucked in corners and hidden amongst the padding in the walls. Under the furniture, behind the light fittings even one most memorably inside the bloody toilet.

Agatha hadn't even lasted through a whole recording, which had looped around every fifteen minutes or so, before she had decided she wasn't going to sit idly by and be tortured alongside her murderer. She had set to finding every speaker that her captors had at their disposal and had torn them from their housing, silencing the sound as best she could.

The cell was in severe disarray. She had toppled the bookcase and scattered its contents, the television hung askew on the wall, the couch was flipped, the cushions strewn everywhere, one of them ripped asunder to get to the speaker inside. She'd had to rip off one of the chair legs in order to get to the speaker inside it and the table now stood squint but all was quiet and she'd happily destroy every little one of the buggers again if it meant she didn't have to listen to Dracula screaming in such a terrorised and... _wet_ manner.

Agatha lifted her head, still breathing hard. The aftershocks of adrenaline were a hell of a thing and she felt not at all in control of herself. Twitchy and snarling at even her own shadow. Highly undignified and far too much like one of her less evolved vampiric cousins for peace of mind.

Ignoring the chaos around her for now, Agatha folded her legs beneath herself and settled herself with a will. She had not been a nun for her exceptional knitting skills. Living in the time and place that she had, ignoring all earthly pleasures particularly when they were so thin on the ground had not come about by accident. Self control had always been her strength and she needed that now.

Yes, they had been torturing her companion but there was nothing she could currently do about that. Aside from the fact that she didn't even like said companion, she was not entirely devoid of compassion. Whatever the Harkers were doing to him and hurt him enough to make him scream and -monster or not- Dracula was not one to scream for just anyone. Hiss and snarl, certainly, howl in rage, roar to horrify, yes, he would do all of these things.

...but scream in pain?

Agatha swept it aside. Nothing she could do. Not for him. Not right now.

What she could do was control herself.

So Agatha closed her eyes, assumed a comfortable position and began to breathe deeply. 

Meditation was not something so foreign to her. She had taken readily to the practice once introduced to it. She found it to be much like the hours of prayer and subjugation she had gone through at the convent surrounded by her sisters. Though arguably meditation was prayer to the self rather than a higher being. 

Either way, it allowed Agatha to centre herself once more and regain her mind from the red claws of panic that needled at it.

Part of her wondered if the Harkers knew. If they knew that the sound of screams she could do nothing to cease or ease had haunted her for decades. Did they know that she could be wrenched backwards through time to that infernal night where Dracula and his wolves had torn apart her sisters? 

Or was it simply psychological torture to take her one companion and make him howl for death while she was forced to listen?

Agatha let these thoughts pass her as leaves would on a stream. The fraught emotions that the day (or night) had brought seeped from her as well. Carried away in the current of her thoughts. She wilfully detached herself from the distractions and detractions of emotion. Let her empathy for the Count seep away, the guilt of her sisters' deaths ebbed as well until finally only she remained.

A hydraulic hiss hauled her from the depths of her mind and Agatha's eyes snapped open to see the tube that had carried Dracula away emerge from the ceiling once more.

Animal instinct caused her muscles to bunch in a useless flight response and Agatha reined herself in with a will.

The tube was not empty.

A smear of black crimson blood streaked over the glass of the cylinder as it rotated. The crumpled form inside didn't even twitch as the doorway to the cell opened and Dracula's lifeless form slumped out of the tube and onto the padded floor. He didn't even twitch to try and break his fall and Agatha cautiously rose to her feet even as the tube withdrew and secreted itself into the ceiling once more.

"Count?" Agatha took a hesitant step towards him and stilled when still there was no response. "Dracula?"

Agatha crept towards him, wary of his animal nature. He had been tortured, his recorded screams evidence enough of same, and she had no idea if he would be sane enough to recognise that she meant him no harm with her approach. She'd rather not have him lunge for her throat and then have them both be electrified once more when she inevitably and wilfully defended herself.

"Dracula, can you hear me?" She lowered herself carefully to his side, wary of how he looked so very corpse like with no animation to his features. No leering grin or debonair smarm.

Agatha carefully took his head in her hands and turned him so she might see his face. She sucked in a surprised breath through her teeth at what she saw.

Staples. They had stapled his mouth shut.

Agatha took him by the shoulders and gently turned him over fully. She hissed in horror when she did so and the extent of his injuries were revealed.

The ragged hem of his ruined shirt fell open across his pale chest and Agatha stared in horror at the huge Y incision that spanned him from one end of his clavicle to the other and all the way down to his navel. This wound too had been crudely stapled back together, like torn bits of paper, and blood seeped still from the gaps in the less than precise job.

For long moments, she could only stare. Horrified despite all she had seen during her long years. Torture and screaming and squallor on the battlefield. War that spanned all of the continents in all the world. Bombs whistling from the sky to tear buildings apart like tissue paper. Fascism, racism, propaganda, segregation, prosecution, internment camps, blood magic, death dealers, demons, monsters and the very dregs of humanity but she had _never_ seen someone vivisected.

An autopsy carried out whilst the subject was still alive and their mouth sewn shut so they couldn't even scream of it.

"Up. Get him up." Agatha lunged to her feet, gripping Dracula by the shoulders and heaving at his dead weight. 

He moved surprisingly easily and it took her a moment to convince herself it was due to the fact that she could bench-press cars and not that they had hollowed him out and replaced his organs with straw.

Agatha dragged Dracula across the cell, streaks of blood wheeling in a great arc in their wake but she would deal with that later. She dragged him right across to the tunnel from which she had emerged when she'd first woken and then hunched down, hauling him into the dark and earth with her.

She had no idea if the soil placed there would do but she was out of other options. She would have to hope that it would be close enough to rejuvenate him even if it wasn't Transylvanian.

It was awkward, shuffling backwards on her knees, dragging a corpse, but Agatha was no stranger to body snatching at this late stage and she managed just fine. She pulled him all the way to the back of the tunnel, to where it widened out to a space large enough for the two of them to lie side by side (needs must, she reminded herself) and she laid him out. 

Agatha shoved her hair out of her face, breathing hard and looked down at him.

Nothing. Not even a hint that there was something left of whatever infernal spirit it was that kept this body of his whole and healthy. 

"Wake up!" Agatha rapped her hand hard against the high plane of his cheek and was rewarded with precisely diddly.

"Contrary beast." She grumbled and bit her lip, considering. He had taken much damage but she had little idea of how to fix it.

Up until now, she had been rather intent on being the one to do the damage. To be on the side of attempting to repair it was going to give her a migraine if she wasn't careful.

Well, first things first, she couldn't stand to look at those staples stitching his mouth closed. Despite her want of silence from him many times in their torrid past, she did not wish it to come about this way.

Carefully extending her claws, Agatha pincered them about the first staple at the corner of his mouth and pulled.

There was a horrid little rip and the wretched thing tore free. It shredded the flesh of his lip once more when she pulled it out but that damage could be healed once the staple was no longer hindering the process.

She hoped.

Working diligently, wincing with every further wound she was forced to subject him to, Agatha plucked the staples from his mouth. It was a laborious task and took far longer than she had expected but finally he was free of his muzzle.

Dracula's lips parted once they were no longer held together and Agatha waited for something, anything, that may resemble a sign of animation if not life.

Agatha peeled back his lip with her thumb and frowned. His fangs weren't even fully extended. He appeared to be fully dormant.

Still, she retracted her fingers, she wanted to keep all digits attached. No point in sticking them where they were likely to be gnawed off.

_Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding…_

Agatha's head lifted on a low growl when an insistent ringing interrupted her. She had been quite sure that she had wrenched all speakers from their hidden housing and was rather enamoured with the idea if continued silence for the rest of her stay here.

She glanced down at the Count, debating a moment, then growled again before reversing off him and crawling back through the tunnel to poke her head out into the cell.

_Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding..._

Still the chipper little bell that she was strongly considering eating just to stifle it.

Agatha wriggled out of the tunnel standing upright in the cell and bared her teeth not entirely consciously. She'd had quite enough of her hosts for the while and would like to be left alone for the foreseeable. If this wasn't something more pleasant than their last interaction then she…

Blood.

Agatha, approaching the source of the ringing, had come to the small elevator inset into the wall. She had ripped the door panelling off in her search for weak points not long ago but that didn't appear to hinder its function. Agatha approached rapidly when she saw several bags of donated blood piled up onto a plain plastic tray.

Snatching up the tray, Agatha wasted no time in disappearing back the way she had come. Ducking back into the tunnel with her food and crawling for Dracula once more.

She found him precisely as she had left him. Stretched out on his back, shirt a bloodied ruin around him and that horrible stapled scar glinting in the darkness.

Still, blood fixed everything when it came to Dracula and now she had a handy supply to pour into him.

Picking up the first bag, Agatha ripped open the small tube that was supposed to attach to an IV and took a sniff. She wrinkled her nose at the typical scent of anticoagulant agents used to keep the blood from spoiling but found it otherwise untainted to her senses. With a mental shrug, she knelt over Dracula once more, pushed the tube between his lips and gently squeezed the bag.

She gave him little more than a mouthful and waited.

Nothing.

"You are determined to be difficult I see." Agatha grumbled mostly to herself and considered.

The wounds on his lips hadn't yet healed. She wondered…

Pouring blood from the bag over her fingertips, Agatha rubbed small amounts into the wounds on Dracula's lips. Just a dab for every tiny wound from the staples.

"Hah!" Agatha grinned, pleased with herself when her experiment yielded pleasing results.

The wounds had sealed. Dracula's body had absorbed the small amounts of blood into the wound and used it to regenerate. His mouth was now free of scarring from the staples. 

Excellent.

Agatha's gaze dropped to his chest and the huge Y shaped scar there.

Not to mention whatever unseen damage had been done to his insides.

She had no idea if they had shredded his liver, removed the husk of his heart or simply emptied him out entirely. 

If the blood really could heal him then it seemed to need to be applied topically to each wound in order to do so. Which meant…

"I'm going to have to do this from the inside out." Agatha sighed, looking down at the Count and considering her options.

She could leave him after all. Just leave him like this. He wasn't a threat to anybody in his current state, least of all her. Unless she went out of her way to put him back together then he was likely to remain like this. In stasis. She could just leave him as he was and the next time the tube came down from the ceiling and his presence was required she could just bundle him into it and send him on his way.

Surely that would be kinder. Kinder to leave him inert and unaware for whatever horrors the Harkers had planned for him next. For she was under no illusion that they were done with either herself or Dracula.

Then again...she had no idea that he _was_ inert.

True, his body had failed him, loaded with too much damage to let his consciousness control it. What if he was still there, mind fully conscious, but unable to animate his flesh as he once had?

Surely a fate worse than death, to be locked within your own corpse, and Agatha supposed that Dracula would know all about that…

She sighed.

That and the tactical advantage of having him physically functional once more could not be ignored. He was a huge bear of a man, a warlord of prodigious preternatural strength and a practiced killer. When it came time for her, them, to escape, two sets of claws and fangs would be better than one. If nothing else, he was large enough to use as a handy body shield. Being shot made her irritable.

"Fine." Agatha growled, swinging one leg over the Count's prone body and straddling his thighs.

She shoved his ruined shirt wide and examined the damage. This was going to take some time. That and she had no idea what she might find upon opening him up once more.

"If you can hear me, I apologise if this hurts. Needs must however. It is for your own good." Agatha watched him for any sign of acknowledgement, even a twitch of recognition that she was literally sitting on him…

Nothing.

Disappointing but not surprising.

"Ah well. Shall we begin?" Agatha propped the blood bag by her knee once more for easy reach and extended her claws.

It was just as well that she had nothing but time on her hands.

**_Later…_ **

  
  


Dracula's eyes snapped open and he sucked in a breath on reflex. 

He braced himself for pain, every muscle tensing in preparation to stave off the agony and...none came.

He blinked, letting his eyes adjust to the dim place he found himself in. He was very glad not to be in the white tiled room with the automatons anymore. He had not enjoyed their company in the slightest.

It took him a moment to place where he was and it came back to him on a rush.

In the tunnel in the cell.

Of course, he could feel the cool of soil on his bare back. He would have needed it in order to regenerate.

Dracula stretched carefully, running a self diagnostic and was quite pleased to find that -whilst he felt fatigued and muscle sore- he wasn't in a great deal of pain. He sat up even more carefully than he had stretched and was surprised to see that his clothes were oddly rumpled...and not the clothes he had been wearing earlier.

He wore a simple set of stone grey -what did they call them- scrubs. The drawstring trousers low on his hips and the matching short sleeved shirt had been folded up beneath his head.

Someone had undressed and then redressed him. He frowned, wondering why the Harkers had bothered. The automatons had not seemed so inclined to view him as a creature with the need of such comforts as not having one's arse subjected to an unseemly draft and he doubted they were fool enough to put a human in the room with him even had he been comatose. Even if they had, had they come down into the cell themselves in order to plant him in soil?

Dracula stiffened at that notion.

"Agatha!" He lunged for the tunnel, scrambling through it on his fingers and toes, ignoring the way everything in him burned with the sear of newly healed flesh.

If the automatons had come down into the cell then she was in danger. If they had endangered her then he'd eat every last one of them raw.

Dracula burst out into the cell, blinking rapidly and stilled when he saw Agatha stretched out on the couch.

She too had changed her clothes into the grey scrubs and she lay curled on one side, seemingly indifferent to their captivity. She slept peacefully, her arm folded under her cheek, and her hair tousled wildly about her head and shoulders.

Dracula paused, struck by her unconventional beauty once more, and simply watched her sleep for a moment.

It was less apparent, the faint blush of life that coloured her movements when she was conscious. Her breathing was scant, her chest rising and falling minimally once every two minutes or so. Her heartbeat too had slowed so that he heard it less often than even she breathed. 

Still, she seemed as she always had to him which was staggeringly, vivaciously and unapologetically _alive._

Alive despite his best efforts. Alive in spite of his existence. Just happily, brilliantly, defiantly, alive.

He thought himself quite close to loving her for it.

"Awake at last."

Dracula's eyes darted up to hers and he saw her regard him from beneath hooded lashes. He forced a grin.

"Couldn't leave you wanting my company, could I?"

"Not for lack of the attempt on your part. It has been two days." Agatha yawned, sitting up and stretching. Her fangs flashed with the movement and it took him a moment to wrench his attention away from her attributes and refocus on her words.

"Two days?!"

"Well, I think as much. There is no light nor clock to mark the passing of time. I have certainly been tending to you for longer than forty eight hours." Agatha rose to her bare feet and padded towards him. "Let me look."

"Two days...and you have been unmolested in that time? Our hosts have not bothered you?" Dracula frowned, uneasy that he had been lain so low.

True, the damage weighed upon him by the Harker machines would have destroyed a lesser vampire. None of his previous experiments would have withstood it but that it had disabled him entirely and left her vulnerable…

"Seems to have healed well. You can move your arms?" Agatha prodded at the raised ridge of scar tissue that bisected his chest and Dracula honestly noticed it for the first time.

He stared down at it even as he let her guide his arms up over his head and then out to his sides. He could move just fine but he was poleaxed by the scar.

He hadn't scarred since he was human and he told her as much.

"I doubt it is permanent. It has already faded considerably from when it first formed. Considering the alternative, I'd think you'd be happy to have a scar."

"What did they do to me?" Dracula traced his fingers over the scar. From one end of his collar bone to the other and down the centre of his torso almost to his bellybutton.

"Vivisection." Agatha rubbed at her sleepy eyes, attempting to wake fully. She did look very tired. "As near as I can tell, they removed each one of your organs, presumably to examine them, and then stapled them back into place. Crudely."

"All of my organs?" Dracula frowned, feeling unsurprisingly violated at that. "Why?"

"I have no idea. Perhaps just to see if you could come back from it." Agatha shrugged and he thought she looked very pale. Paler than usual. "For future reference; you heal well enough when blood is poured over your wounds. It would seem that your healing is accelerated by having raw materials from a donor on hand."

At his questioning look, she elaborated.

"They sent blood bags down in the food chute." Agatha waved to indicate the inset in the wall. "There's more if you want it."

"Not hungry." Dracula dismissed it and they both stiffened in surprise when those words left his mouth. He looked at her wildly. 

" _What_ did they do to me?"

"I'm not entirely sure…" Agatha frowned up at him. "Though, in putting you back together, I discovered something else of note."

"Dare I even ask?" Dracula felt out of sorts and displeased with the world in general right now. 

"I'm going to tell you anyway." Agatha smirked at him, folding her arms over her chest and relishing her news.

Dracula was wise to feel a frigid trail of dread crawl up his spine. Still, he was unprepared for the sheer ludicrous nonsense she spouted next.

"Your heart's beating again."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH THE DRAMA!
> 
> Whatever will I do next???
> 
> Don't ask me, not even I know. I am an agent of chaos.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THE BIG REVEAL!
> 
> Y'all find out what Agatha is in this installment and things become altogether more...interesting for our pair. 
> 
> Updating today because I'm busy through the weekend and suspected there may be some sort of riot if I postponed.

**Chapter 5 - Adjustments All Round**

His heart?

Beating?

_His_ heart?

Dracula stared down at Agatha for a long moment. Blinking. His mouth open in a stunned little 'o' of incredulity and mustered the best argument he could in the circumstances.

"Rubbish."

Agatha arched an eyebrow, her head tilting to one side.

"I'd hear it." Dracula felt on firmer ground now. "I'd _feel_ it."

"...wait for it." Agatha's chin tilted down and Dracula was forced to stand there in wretched silence which seemed to stretch uncomfortably.

_Ba-dump._

Dracula made a very small and surprised sound, hopping back a step like a startled cat, and his hands clapped to his chest over the place where his deadened husk of a heart should be. He could feel the echo of the vibration, the slosh of blood around his antiquated circulatory system. He could feel it now, the faint hum of being alive once more. The burn in the bottom of his lungs that worried under the surface of his thoughts like a bur beneath a saddle; _remember to suck in._

Dracula gaped at Agatha. Horrified. His mind a mess of tangled thoughts and feelings.

"How dare they?!" He all but hissed.

"I am certainly more interested in how they _could_ have than to be surprised that they would have." Agatha hummed a moment, considering. "Do you feel any different?"

Dracula, in the name of preventing himself from working into a royal tantrum the likes of which he hadn't indulged in centuries, gave due consideration to her question. He searched through the sensations that he usually wilfully ignored. Perambulating in one's own cadaver through sheer bloody mindedness for upwards of five centuries meant that a lot of sensory input that would have driven lesser minds mad was relegated to simple background noise. 

"I am no longer...drowning." He decided after a long moment.

"Drowning?" Agatha frowned at him, clearly she had not expected him to say as such.

"Before, the hunger, the need to feed, that was what it was like. Drowning. Never enough air despite the fact that I didn't need to breathe. Mimicking the act didn't help, I tried that for the first few years after...well, just after. I do not feel that anymore."

Agatha blinked at him, processing that and shifted her weight. She opened her mouth, discarded several options, and then finally landed on a question.

"To clarify; you've existed with the sensation of drowning for...centuries?"

"Well...I became very good at ignoring it after a while. Distracted myself. And the blood helped." Dracula nodded to himself, his eyes landing on the couch. 

He was struck with the powerful need to sit down. He was rather surprised when he didn't even manage a step towards the couch before his legs folded up and he sank down right where he was. He didn't quite know what to do when Agatha lowered onto her heels to kneel in front of him. Something very like concern painting her features.

Oh, he didn't like that. He much preferred when she poked at him and needled him. He didn't like her looking like she might have to _gentle_ herself for him. How abhorrent.

"Every time you fed, you felt less like you were asphyxiating?" Agatha raised her eyebrows with the question and hummed when he nodded. "Though that urgency is gone now that your heart beats once more and your lungs work?"

"Seems like." Dracula was silent a beat more, considering his internals. 

"Interesting." Agatha finally decided and smirked when he shot her a Look. "You cannot deny that it is."

"Am I like you now?" Dracula frowned as it occurred to him. "You breathe. Your heart beats. Not as a human's would but you do it anyway. You say you are not a vampire and yet you have offered no real answer as to what you _are._ Tell me, wife, what are we now?"

Agatha glared at him, her eyes narrowed, her full lips pursing as if she wished to miser her words. Her long fingers drummed once against the knee of her trousers and she shrugged suddenly. Her frown melted away and she tossed her hair over one shoulder as if it mattered little.

"I do not even know that you will have heard of what I am. You see, I- -” Agatha's mouth worked a moment when part of her baulked at the telling of it.

She reminded herself sternly that no matter what she told him, he would make the worst of it so she might as well get it over with.

"You're…?" Dracula prompted when she ebbed into silence.

She sighed.

"A concubus."

Dracula blinked.

"Don't." Agatha warned him.

The corner of his mouth twitched.

"Do _not."_ She growled.

Dracula pressed his lips together, lifted one hand to cup his jaw and cover his mouth when it became clear he could not contain his smile. He coughed to try and disguise the sound of strangled laughter threatening to eke free of his throat.

"Oh, just get it over with before you pop something." Agatha snarled and her reward was a long and drawn out snort from the Count in front of her.

Well, at least he no longer looked in danger of going into shock. He'd had an unhealthy pallor from centuries without the sun, it was true, but she'd never seen him look _grey_ before.

"You're a _TERRIBLE_ nun!" Dracula crowed a laugh. "A concubus? The female version of which is a succubus? The nightmare of young men?! A she-demon that would drain the virility from the impure leaving naught but shrivelled husks in her wake?!"

Dracula threw back his head and laughed. Agatha was disturbed to note that it was a deep and rich sound. Her eyes dropped to his throat.

Ah. She hadn't thought of that. Now that his heart beat, he had a pulse. Now that he was 'alive' his energy had taken on a different tenor. Something altogether more...tempting to her.

Her fangs sank into her lower lip, watching the exposed column of his neck, the throb of his jugular pulsing under his skin...she was famished.

"Oh." Dracula voice was soft and delighted, his eyes dancing with mirth when her gaze snapped up to meet his once more. "Oh, Agatha, are you _hungry?"_

"Of course I'm hungry." She hid behind irritation as it was a familiar armour to her. "I've been locked in here with you for days and they keep sending _blood_ for us to feed on."

"Is blood not enough?" Dracula considered it. "I saw you feed on those men on the video. It appeared as if you were drinking their blood."

"I was. After a fashion. I feed on energy. Life force. If I do not have the...time to feed as I would prefer then taking blood is a more expedient means of forming a connection with my victim." Agatha didn't often have to put it into words. Her choice sat ill with her. 'Victim' implied that those she fed on deserved mercy and the same could not be said of the vampires that Dracula had seen her tear apart on the Harkers' video.

"This. Is. _Delightful."_ Dracula clapped his hands to the floor and scooted himself closer to her, his long legs parting so that she was bracketed between his knees.

He was very close. She could _smell_ him. What had been a rich scent before, the powerful scent of a dangerous man, it had been muted since his endocrine system had been nonfunctional. Now though...now that his body was awakening...so was her hunger.

Agatha dragged her gaze up from the hollow of his throat and found him grinning insufferably again. She glared at him.

"Don't pout, wife. Even though it makes you look adorable, it is unnecessary."

"Oh, is it?" Agatha raised her eyebrows on a humourless smirk.

"Of course. You fed me before, sustained me for weeks, it is only fair that I return the favour."

Agatha blinked, rocking back on her heels and stared at him.

"I could kill you."

"Then today is as all others have been." Dracula grinned at her, boyish and delighted and wholly unhinged.

"I don't just take blood, Count. I feed on your very life. One which you have only just recovered after five centuries without it. It wouldn't be a warrior's death either. The kiss of a concubus drains you of all vitality, all will. You would simply...lie down."

"And never get up?" Dracula's brow creased as he pondered that and then he grinned. "Well, worst comes to it then I'll be a vampire again, hmm?"

"Those I feed from never rise again." Agatha's voice was flat and her tone final. "I cannot create, I may only consume."

"Surely you could have a nibble." Dracula jostled her with a jog of his knee. "Just a smidgen. I won't begrudge you it, I promise."

"No, Count. You would not." Agatha shook her head. It went unsaid that, once she was done with him, he wouldn't be doing anything at all.

"I find it hard to believe that the great Agatha Van Helsing, denier of all earthly pleasures, bride of Christ (and now Dracula) cannot control herself to take a mere sip of me." He mocked her with that toothy smile of his.

A smile that vanished when he found himself flat on his back, Agatha straddling his chest and her hands closed about his throat. All he could see was glittering golden pupils and flashing fangs.

"My favourite flavour is _violence_ , Count, did you know that?" She was breathing hard, hot and heavy against his mouth. "You're a sadist, a cold blooded killer, you've torn apart _thousands_ and that was before you ever became a vampire. I have one purpose on this earth and it is to neuter and devour those like you. Why, in all of creation, would I have ever learned to curb that impulse?"

Dracula considered that and hummed deep in his throat. She did seem quite serious and -truth be told- he wasn't at his best right now. Probably better not to let her swallow him whole.

"Hmm. Quite right." Dracula's large hands curled around her shoulders and he gave a little push.

Agatha's lips lifted in a silent snarl. Her not inconsiderable strength tested against his for a drawn out moment before she grumbled and reversed off him. 

Agatha powered to her feet and spun away. She padded to the couch and threw herself down onto it. Rolling her head on her neck as if to work out a kink. She swallowed the rest of her growls and looked at him only once her pupils were dark once more.

Dracula pushed upright himself, looked about himself and then cautiously approached her after picking up the white tray piled high with blood bags.

Agatha saw what he had and snorted with obvious disdain. Everything in her manner suggested that she was unsurprised that he would feed himself even when not hungry. He was a glutton after all and had zero self control.

She stilled, watching with banked interest, when he did not feed from the blood spread out before him but rather scented carefully at each one. He narrowed the choices from nine to four and went so far as to taste each of them before offering her three.

"Mercenaries." He nodded to his gift, explaining when she only arched a brow at him. "Two of them are male but the female is twice as vicious as either of them. If it's violence you crave then this may tide you over."

Agatha could only stare at him. Surprised that he would...just surprised.

Then again, she considered, if he thought her one of his brides then it was hardly out of character for him to wish to feed her. He had grown used to having kept pets. Having to tend to and feed them so that they didn't tear themselves and others apart in their frenzy.

He must be quite unused to having a bride that was fully capable of feeding themselves and in fact had learned to make a living from it.

Then again, that part had likely not occurred to him either.

"It doesn't work like that." Agatha told him though her tone was not as unkind as it could have been. "To my senses, that blood is lifeless. It doesn't matter who it comes from, it needs to be fresh from the source. I _will_ have to feed upon you, but not yet. Not whilst you are so...new."

"Very well." He accepted but looked displeased with the situation. Well, he was hardly alone in that. He looked down at the bags of donated blood on the tray. "Not that I blame you, the presentation leaves something to be desired."

Agatha managed a wan smile at that.

"Could you really kill me?" Dracula pulled over one of the chairs from by the table and sat across from her. 

He propped his elbows on his knees, bit into a blood bag and drained it in long swallows. He grimaced at the taste or perhaps the temperature but set aside the empty bag and doggedly picked up another. If he was required to be at full strength to control her when she fed then he had best do so quickly.

"Of course. I can kill anything." Agatha shrugged and there was no ego to it, just statement of fact. "If I could get my fangs into her, I could kill Ariel."

Dracula frowned when Agatha nodded towards the glass wall of their cell and the dark ocean water beyond.

"Ariel?"

"Mmm. Pop culture. It's too involved to explain. Suffice to say that I cannot pronounce her name so I gave her one I could."

"You _named_ it?"

"I named you, boy." Agatha raised a brow at him and he couldn't help but grin. Getting back to her old self he saw. He tore into another blood bag.

"I told you to leave her alone."

"You shall have to imagine my utter surprise when I found myself ignoring you and doing precisely what I wanted anyway." Agatha gave him a wide eyed guileless look.

"She-demon." He growled at her though not without affection and a little pride. "What does it have to say for itself then?"

" _She_ is a captive here, like us. They have her...family? I think. It is mostly colours and images she uses to communicate. Hardly a precise thing."

"And you have always been able to communicate mind to mind?" Dracula prompted when she lapsed into silence.

"A holdover from my time locked within your mind, I think." Agatha dipped her chin in a nod. "The other incubi I have met have been...unable to contend with me in such a manner."

"Incubi?" Dracula straightened in his chair. "You've met males of your kind?"

"I've met males of every kind." Agatha drawled. "I have drained every single one that has attempted liberties with me as well. Remember that."

"You are extraordinary." Dracula grinned at her.

"So I have been told." Agatha smirked. "Many times."

"Pride still coming before the fall I see."

"I'm practiced at landing on my feet now." Agatha's eyes danced with humour and Dracula chuckled.

She had exceeded every hope or expectation he'd had of her and then some. He grinned at her, so proud, his smile only fading when she became serious once more.

“We need to get out of here.” Her fingers curled into fists on her knees. “You’re right, you’re like me now. They turned you from one of the undead to an immortal.” Agatha waved at herself to indicate infernal referred to one of the undead with a pulse, he supposed. “I suspected that there was a relation between my species and vampires but the Harkers evidently _knew_. Not only that, but they knew how to trigger the metamorphosis between one and the other.”

Dracula had to silently agree that was indeed troubling. He had always been alone as one of his species. He had thought for the longest time, the only one of his kind. That was apparently not the case if Agatha was running about in the mountains of the desert and killing off his kin left and right as she had done before the Harkers had caught her. That the Harkers would know more about vampirism and related parasitic humanoid races was…troubling.

“So…you were never a vampire?” Dracula tossed aside another empty blood bag and resolved to drain another. He really had no appetite for such bland fare, but he was picking up bits and pieces from the blood he imbibed.

The Harkers really shouldn’t have taken donations from the security staff that intimately knew the layout of what he now knew was an entire facility high above them.

“No. I…do not think my heart ever really stopped.” Agatha frowned, thinking back to all those years ago when she had been hurled from the destruction of the _Demeter_. “I was washed ashore and assumed to be dead. It was the coroner, a Doctor Hooper, that noticed I still had a pulse and was breathing. Albeit at a much slower rate than was accepted as the norm.”

“Doctor Hooper?” Dracula picked up on the way Agatha’s mouth hooked in the smallest of smirks as she spoke the name.

“Oh, stifle your possessiveness.” Agatha huffed at him. “You would have liked her.”

“Her?” Dracula straightened up a little. “I did not think that women could be physicians in that time.”

“Indeed not. Which is the why of her appearing as a man.” Agatha grinned lazily. “She was _very_ clever and taught me much about…how to live in a man’s world, how to care for myself…sate my new appetites. In fact, she was invaluable in finding me those that deserved such appetites.”

“Deserved?” Oh, this he had to hear. Her justification for her murdering ways.

“Of course. Did you think I would feast with impunity like my predecessor?” Agatha flicked her fingers at him dismissively. “You well know that I have ever been the one to master myself before all other things. No. I did not feed randomly. I devoured more murderers, rapists, sex traffickers and slavers than you should ever care to meet. If I was to be a demon, then I should certainly be a useful one.”

Dracula grinned at her. Of course. Of course she would.

“Tell me, dear one, those men you devoured without mercy, did you appear to them as Sister Agatha? Did you come to them as a face offering succour and instead became something altogether…unholy?” He had seen it on the footage of her hunting. She enjoyed it. She revelled in making those she believed deserved it suffer.

Agatha huffed something almost like a laugh and shook her head.

“No. I wanted them under no doubt that there would be no repentance for them. No forgiveness from on high. They saw me as what I was. I owed their victims that much. That those monsters would have died screaming if I hadn’t eaten the will they’d need to do so.” Agatha shrugged. “I suppose it fortunate that I do not absorb memories from the blood I imbibe. I would not have preferred to become what I consumed. Perhaps your diet, all those memories collaged over one another, affected you mentally. Stripped your empathy away.”

“If I ever had any to begin with.” A shiver crawled up Dracula’s spine and he marvelled quietly to himself about how she truly had become wonderfully monstrous in their time apart.

“I imagine you did. Once. Long ago.” Agatha watched him with that dissecting stare and Dracula was uncomfortably seen. 

“You cannot deny that you have developed a sense of drama.” Dracula murmured. Grinning at her instead of introspecting. “There was no real need to hurl that general out of his armoured car before you ate him.”

“Depends on your definition of need.” Agatha shrugged a lean shoulder. “Perhaps I wanted his subjects to see his shattered body before it was torn apart by the carrion feeders.”

“Want is not need.”

“And you are the _last_ that would be able to lecture me on the difference betwixt the two.” Agatha snorted at him and her eyes dropped to the blood he had finished consuming. “Find out anything useful?”

Of course she had realised the why of his dinner. Clever girl.

“What is an oil rig?”

“I structure built over the ocean to harvest fossil fuels from below the ocean bed. Some of them are mobile but all of them are in remote locations.” Agatha frowned.

“Well, we’re under an oil rig.” Dracula ran his tongue over his teeth and hummed, measuring the taste left on his tongue. “Possibly in the North Sea.”

“A site that hosts many such rigs. Blending in, I suppose.” Agatha nodded.

“Owned by the Harkers from top to bottom. Huge complement of mercenaries and…I do not believe that we are the only occupants. There is Ariel out there but also…it is indistinct. Other creatures. Not human.”

“Possible allies.” Agatha looked down at her nails and considered their sharp length. “Providing they do not recognise me on sight.”

“Infamous are we?”

“You truly expected any less of me?” Agatha spread her hands wide and then dropped them just as sharply. “I work for an agency that…curbs the more aggressive elements of non-human races.”

“Eats them, you mean. How else would you know that you could kill anything should you be able to sink your teeth into it?”

“Relocation and rehabilitation are actually preferred. I am brought in as the last resort. When there is no hope of reasoning with such…beasts.” Agatha heaved a sigh, something flickering behind her eyes, memories perhaps. “It is not something I enjoy. The slaughter of such creatures. They are not cruel they simply…are.”

“But vampires are fair game?”

“Call it a personal prejudice.” Agatha smiled at him with narrowed eyes and he chuckled.

“Wicked woman.”

“I am what I was made to be.” Her words were clipped and her eyes dropped to his throat again. The third time in as many minutes.

“You’re starving.”

“It has been a long captivity. They must have taken blood of me before they dumped me down here.” Agatha let her eyes close as if studying her internals. “It is well documented that I feasted before becoming captive. I should not be this hungry in so short a span.”

“Excuses, excuses, you’re going to have to eat me sometime.” Dracula sat back in his chair, scolding lightly.

“I’d prefer you to have all the bloodlust you can muster for when I manage to figure a way out of here.”

“You have a plan?” Dracula raised an eyebrow expectantly.

“Most of one.” Agatha folded her arms over her chest and continued defiantly when he simply stared at her. “Much of one. The majori- -alright, I mostly have the letter ‘P’ but I have done better with worse in the past.”

“I remember it well.” Dracula spoke in a sotto voice. He considered her a moment. “Why are you really so hesitant? Is your feeding such…an intimate thing?”

Agatha’s suddenly golden gaze raked him from top to toe and it was more of an answer than any words could be. He grinned.

“You’re perverted. There is the real possibility that I shall drain you dry.”

“But what a way to go!” Dracula laughed and did so louder when she glared at him.

“You would literally die for the chance of my mouth on you?” Agatha snorted, seemingly swinging back towards amused rather than irritated.

“Who wouldn’t?” Dracula lifted his hands in honest query, a smile tugging at his lips.

One that vanished when her eyes widened.

“Move!” Agatha lunged from her seat on the couch, barrelling upright and then crashing into Dracula.

There was a muted _fwip_ of sound and Agatha yelped as they tumbled to the floor. Dracula taking the brunt of their impact, wrapping his arms around her in order to try and protect her.

He flipped them both, covering her smaller body with his much larger and his dark eyes darted around the room, searching for the source of the sound. He saw nothing but one of the panels in the ceiling closing over after whatever it was that had been aimed at them retracted back into its hiding hole.

Dracula’s lips lifted from his teeth and he gave a low snarl, mentally marking the area that he would need to tear apart later.

“Bastards shot me.” Agatha grumbled and Dracula’s head whipped down in order to look at her.

Agatha lay prone beneath him, rubbing at her neck with one hand and scowling at the dart she held between the talons of her other. A small bead of blood smeared under her hand on her neck and Dracula swept aside the perk of interest that thrilled through him.

Ascertain that she was well, destroy the ability to shoot either of them again and _then_ he could lust over the taste of her.

“Again.” Agatha blew out a sudden breath and Dracula felt himself tense when her pupils were suddenly huge and golden. The thinnest rim of blue ringing her burning golden pupils. “Oh.”

“Oh?” Dracula parroted, keeping himself over her to shield her.

His eyes darted around the cell once more, searching for a safe space to stash her whilst he tore apart the walls and ceiling searching for more weaponised décor.

He was dimly aware of her hands on his chest, expecting that she would shove at him and demand to be let up any second now. Equally assured that he would ignore any and all requests of same until he was certain he could put her somewhere safe.

Not for the first time, he began to think that he never should have walked into this prison with her and should have simply devoured each and every one of the Harker Institute staff until they told him where she was and how to get to her. Willingly or not.

Ah, the sleeping tunnel. Where they could literally go to ground. Of course.

“Agatha, can you stand? We’re going to the tunnel, alright?” Dracula’s head was on a swivel, looking for any further sign of aggression from the ceiling above them.

Nothing so far.

“Mm-hmm.”

“Okay, you’re going to stay beneath me and we’re going to move together.”

“Capital idea.” Agatha’s breath was _hot_ against his neck and Dracula froze when her lips suddenly trailed down over his jugular. She hummed into the hollow of his throat and he stared down at her when her hands began to travel down his chest towards…

“Ah. No.” Dracula sat up, gripping her wrists in one large hand. “None of that. At least not yet.” Dracula amended.

He all but yelped when Agatha, far stronger than he gave her credit for, lifted both arms over her head so that he was forced to topple forward to keep his grip on her wrists. He was nose to nose with her and altogether unsure how she had managed to wind both legs around his hips.

“ _Yes_.” Agatha’s eyes were molten, her cheeks flushed. He could see her pulse thundering in her throat, hear her heartbeat throbbing all around him as if it were coming from the very walls of their cell. “You said you would feed me. I’m _hungry_.”

“Yes. Well, ah…” Dracula trailed off onto a deep growl when Agatha’s hips rolled up against his.

A deep scent, rich and enticing, was rolling off her in waves. Heat belted from her. Her heart was thudding powerfully in her chest and she was so staggeringly _alive_. She taunted Dracula with her heat and her vitality and every single part of him reacted. He could no more help that than he could his sudden resurgence of the need to breathe.

“Agatha, you’re not in control of yourself.” Dracula attempted to remind her, ignoring the way she was rolling up against him, soft heat grinding into his hard length and sharp nips of her delicate fangs at his throat.

“Pots and kettles.” Agatha hummed a thrumming chuckle into his throat and the sound vibrated clear through him. “Is that a stake in your pocket or are you pleased to see me?”

“Agatha, they’ve dosed you with…” He had no idea what it was but it was clearly making her act in a manner contrary to her own personality. When he did finally claim her, he wanted _her_ , not whatever drugged up docile thing the Harkers had turned her into.

_WHAM!_

Dracula grunted when he found himself suddenly on his back and he was forced to revise the ‘docile’ part of his hypothesis.

“Aphrodisiac. Tastes like…” Agatha straddled Dracula, effortlessly pinning his arms to the floor above his head. Her tongue ran over her lips and she hummed at whatever she could taste. “Overdose of serotonin, epinephrine, oxytocin aaanndd…oestrogen.”

“Those were all likely words.” Dracula agreed.

“They mean for me to fuck you.” Agatha was breathing hard still. She frowned. “I do not think you wish for that?”

“Ah, no, not particularly. Not under these circumstances.” Dracula tested his strength against hers. He barely managed to wrench his wrists an inch off the floor before she slammed them back down again with an imperious growl.

“Oh. Well.” Agatha rested over him on her hands and knees, her thighs cinched tight about his waist and her tongue tracing over the tips of her fangs. “I suppose I should let you go.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want you to do something you’d regret.” Dracula smiled winsomely, his muscles bunching as he attempted to wriggle free of her clutches once more.

No use.

“Regret eating you? You who never gave your victims the chance to live? You who _revelled_ in the death and destruction you weighed on everyone with your mere presence? You who _slaughtered_ my sisters and laughed about it afterwards? Regret? Really?”

“You need me to help you escape.” Dracula managed something of a smile and noticed the cold sensation crawling up his spine might actually be fear.

“Why would I need to do that when I can simply devour you? Take your strength as my own?”

“Uuh…my shining personality?” Dracula gasped when she leaned down and her fangs coursed down over the side of his neck. His spine arched, his hips bumping up against hers and she purred into the muscle where his neck met his shoulder.

“I suppose you were always a decent conversationalist.” Agatha bit him once, twice, three times, sipping at each tiny wound. He shivered all over.

“We had a truce.” He reminded her. “Enemy of my enemy, remember?”

“Oh, we both know we were going to kill one another as soon as we were free. Well, you were going to try. This has always been inevitable.” Agatha sucked on his neck and Dracula could _feel_ her draining him. Not just his blood but his strength, his will. He trembled in weakness and that had been but a mere sip from her.

“You…you’re not like this.” Dracula gasped, the strength leaving his limbs, leaving him cold as her bite took effect.

“I am what I was made to be.” Agatha laughed into his neck, throaty and plainly amused.

She shifted up against him, her body dragging hot and heavy over his chest, her lips brushing his ear with each word.

“Do not worry, dear boy, I’m going to make you _last_.”

Dracula, from somewhere, managed a hollow laugh at how –of course- she would turn his own words against him.

His laughter died on a choked gasp when her head ducked, quick as a snake, and her fangs sank deep into his throat.

He realised only then that he had been a fool to think that he would ever have been strong enough to stop her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun fact: 
> 
> Incubus is derived from the Latin phrase meaning 'to lie atop'. Succubus similarly is from 'to lie beneath'. Concubus; 'to lie beside'. 
> 
> In this fic I use concubus as a general term for what Agatha and now Dracula are, Incubus and Succubus being the gendered terms for male and female respectively. Though I suppose you could view Incubi as tops, succubi as bottoms and concubi that can do both. 
> 
> Either way, still fits with Drac and Aggie as far as I'm aware. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's probably time for an update? I don't even know what day it is anymore. 
> 
> Oh well, must be time for more shenanigans and banter.

**Chapter 6 - Delirious**

Dracula came back to himself flat on his back, in the tunnel behind their cell once more, with Agatha stretched out on top of him.

Stretched out, shivering, and bleeding into his mouth.

Dracula thundered a growl, lunging up into her throat and biting deep. He revelled in her gasp, flipping them both so that she spilled onto the floor and he drank deeply of her. He grasped her wrists in his large hands, pinning them to the earth above her head and all but purred at the familiar taste of her on his tongue. Succubus or not, she was delicious.

Reality snapped back into focus suddenly, with a clarity that had never before reached him when feeding and he withdrew from her. Licking at the wounds on her neck until they closed.

She was shivering. Trembling violently beneath him, but it was not with fear. Salt sweat beaded her skin, he could taste it amongst the nectar if her blood. Heat thrummed feverish from her every pore and she sank her fangs into her lips to hold back the whimpers. 

She was in pain. In pain that had very little to do with him for once.

"Agatha? Can you hear me?" Dracula pushed himself up onto his knees so he no longer crushed her to the floor.

Her hands whipped out from beneath his with an ease that made it clear she could have at any time. Her arms snaked around his torso and she pulled him closer once more.

"Cold." She gasped. "So cold."

"Alright. Alright, my love. I'm here." Dracula lowered himself more fully against her, scorched by the fever that wracked her but he resigned himself to the discomfort. If he could only blanket her with his whole self then he could gladly do it. "Feeling a bit more yourself I take it?"

"Heh." She coughed a laugh bitterly. "Can't control a succubus with hormones. That's my thing."

"You were pretending?" Dracula's brows rose. Every time he thought he couldn't be more impressed with her, she proved him wrong.

"Needed them to think they'd won." Agatha gasped, shivering beneath him and wriggling as close as she could. He was so warm and she was so cold. "Fed from you. Dragged you in here. No cameras."

"You hope." Dracula murmured.

"I checked." She waved vaguely and Dracula lifted his head to peer around.

Every inch -every piece of it- bore the mark of her claws. She had raked the wall, the floor and the ceiling of the tunnel. Tearing free great chunks here and there but he had to admit that she had been very thorough in making sure she was unobserved in this space.

"Good girl." Dracula curled an arm around her head to cushion her from the ground. The soil was soft but it wasn't very warm. Not with her fever. "What have they done to you?"

"Don't know. Feeding from you doesn't help." Agatha shook her head sharply. "I did not lose control but...I do want to."

"Makes sense. I'm irresistible."

"Arse." She sniped at him. 

"What are your symptoms?" Dracula tried again. He might not know much about the modern world but he had been walking around in a version of it for a few centuries. Sickness and death he was all too familiar with.

"Fever, increased appetite, dehydration and...and...god, I want you to fuck me."

"Uh…" Dracula looked sharply down at her, braced to fend her off once more if he had to. She was watching him with glowing golden pupils, tucked into the curl of his big body, but it was a statement of fact. She made no move to pounce on him once more.

He cleared his throat and reminded himself not to gloat.

"To clarify: this is unusual?"

"I should have just eaten you." She snarled.

"But then you would still be miserable and unsatisfied." Dracula reminded her with a grin. 

"Stop enjoying this. We are the best hope each other has of getting out of here." Her claws extended, prickling against the naked skin of his back and he wisely decided not to goad her anymore.

For now.

A promise that was made harder to stick to when she buried her face in his neck and _keened_ into him. Her hips nudging up against his without her control.

"Not to put too fine a point on it, my dear, but you sound like you're in heat."

She stilled beneath him.

"Is that possible? Can that happen to a succubus?" Dracula stared down at her.

"I can certainly trigger it in incubi." She panted into his neck.

He frowned at her.

"Oh please, it makes them stupid and easier to control." She scowled right back.

"Have they all been younger than you?" A sudden thought occurred to him.

"No idea." Agatha licked at his neck before yanking her tongue back behind her teeth. Dracula continued as if he hadn't noticed.

"Only a hypothesis but the female of the species often has the final say when it comes to mating. Not many will let a male have her unless he proves worthy." Dracula considered a moment more. "If nothing else, they were likely smaller than you and less vicious. Hardly good specimens."

"You think I'd choose you?" Agatha snarled into his neck, reminding him where her teeth were.

"I think that your body would. You cannot deny that I am powerful and large enough to make even your statuesque height seem dainty. Physically, we fit together quite well." Dracula braced, prepared to yank his head back and out of her reach should she attempt to chew it off.

"...your hypothesis is not entirely moronic." She grumbled, pressing her forehead against his chest. Her shivers seemed to not so much lessen as come from deeper within her bones. "The inference is concerning."

"That they intend for us to be a breeding pair? I should say so." Dracula spoke lightly but...it haunted him.

Could he? Could they? They were both technically now alive. Had heartbeats and everything. Did that mean that all of him was alive once more? Could he sire actual offspring rather than simply fashion pale reflections of himself in the corpses of those that he devoured?

He had spent the greater part of five hundred years attempting to reproduce. Could it have been made possible in a matter of days by some mad scientists with no regard for morality nor good sense?

"How do concubi reproduce?" He found himself asking. "The old fashioned way?"

"No idea. We're a rarity. Our territories vast. We don't socialise."

"You have met others though?"

"Insufferable." She growled, her grip tightening on him as if one of them may appear to attempt to steal him away.

"I'd have thought they'd be positively delightful as opposed to me." He teased lightly.

"You had the good manners to disappear for decades after I blew you up. Those bitches pop back up in a matter of weeks."

"Oh?" He was all impressed again. Which was surprising certainly because his opinion of her had never been low.

"One does not take the entire British Isles as her territory without making some noise about it." Agatha sniffed and, was she, yes, she preened a bit for him. Showing off.

"The whole of Britain?" Dracula sounded suitably impressed and it was genuine. 

"Well, Maab has Ireland but not even I shall tangle with Maab." Agatha sounded a little put out about it. "She is ancient."

"Intriguing."

" _Mine."_ Agatha reminded him on a snarl.

"Of course. No arguments here, dear one." Dracula dropped a kiss on her head and she seemed to be mollified a little by that. "I simply meant that she may know more about this than we do."

Agatha was quiet for a long moment, her claws prickling over his spine as she thought.

"We have fought. She and I."

"Not like you." Dracula hummed and grunted when she stabbed him with a claw to remind him of his manners.

"I have tasted her blood."

Dracula's brows rose at that and he looked down at her. She was flushed and uncomfortable. She bit back moans with every breath and it must have been a horrendous effort to simply lie there and not take what she wanted by force. Something he knew from personal experience.

Oh, if he were still capable he would certainly be in love with her by now.

"Do you think you could reach her? Through that?" He asked, intrigued. She had never mentioned leaving any of her victims alive before. If she could contact even one of them and ask for help…

"Maab is not the benevolent kind. She did not take kindly to me murdering her neighbours and usurping them."

"No. The old guard can be a mite tetchy about such things." Dracula agreed easily. "But it need not be her. If you know of anyone you have a blood connection with that is still alive, it would be a way for you to call for reinforcements."

"I don't typically leave anyone in a state to hold conversation when I am done with them."

"Seriously?!" Dracula glared at her. Typical.

"You didn't even leave yours with a pulse, boy." She snapped at him and Dracula settled himself. That was true.

"So the only one you've bloodied but not lobotomised will have no interest in sending help our way?"

"If I could even do it. I've never reached out across such a distance before."

"It is possible. I did not always have to be near you in order to connect my mind with yours." Dracula considered. "Perhaps...together?"

"I'm not letting her see you!" Agatha snarled and he was quick to quiet her before she shredded him in misplaced anger.

"Of course not, beloved. She shall never even know I'm there."

Agatha growled for a long moment and it trailed off into a whine. She pressed her face into his neck again.

"This is insufferable." 

"I do believe you've lived through worse." Dracula swept her hair back from her face and was treated to a small bite in rebuke.

"I cannot think."

"I am more than happy to sate you in whichever manner you desire, wife. Though I don't think the gravity of the consequences should be ignored." 

Dracula was all for fucking Agatha. Whenever and however she might want it. In whatever way he could manage it. 

However.

_However_. If they could now bear children. If he could father a son or daughter on her he did not wish to do so at the behest of their captors. Whatever reasons the Harkers had for wanting a breeding pair of concubi, he was loathe to do as they wished.

To do so would endanger Agatha and he'd done quite enough of that.

"I'll not be a broodmare for anyone, least of all the Harkers." Her teeth rasped his neck as she spoke. 

"We don't even know that it is possible. We should try to find that out at least." 

"I don't even like you." Agatha grumbled. "Stupid body."

"Yes. Dash those carnal desires." Dracula smirked at her and earned a nip from her fangs on his chin in response. "I don't suppose it helps that I like you enough for both of us?"

"No."

"A devil can try." He shrugged a huge shoulder and Agatha's fingers trailed over the definition of the muscles there. She sighed.

"Nor do I wish to force you." Agatha murmured.

"Do I feel compelled?" Dracula hefted his hips into hers and she gasped at the hard ridge of his cock sliding deliciously against her.

She swore low and fluent in several languages and managed to restrain herself to simply gripping his hips between her knees rather than twining all of her limbs about him like some sort of constrictor.

"You were not willing earlier." She reminded him instead.

"I didn't want to die before I got the chance to fuck you, dear one." He grinned for her and Agatha growled.

"Have you forgotten your consequences already?"

"Yes." His smile slipped away and he shook himself sharply. "It would seem you are not the only one affected by this. Your scent is in my head, wife. It addles me."

"Me in heat and you in rut." Agatha let her head fall back against the floor of the tunnel. "Less than ideal."

"All the more reason to attempt to contact someone in your blood. Whilst we both still retain the capacity to do so." Dracula attempted to minimise his breathing but her scent was powerful and addictive.

He _wanted_ her.

"You will have to feed from me again." Agatha sucked on one lip. "It will transfer the pheromones in my system to yours. Not to mention your opiate effect on me."

"I'm open to other suggestions. I could leave the tunnel, let you -ah- take care of yourself? Sing loudly whilst you do so?" 

He knew the negative before she even snarled and tightened her grip about him. If she had been able to release him she would have done so before now.

"Mine." She growled. Reminding him.

"I have never denied as much." He soothed her. "Would that work?" He was prepared to fight his way free if he must.

"No." She bit at him and then shook herself. Forcing her last two brain cells to get their act together and think. "No. My fingers are not enough."

Dracula nearly choked on the mental imagery that popped up with that one terse sentence. Just the idea…

"Would mine be?"

She whimpered.

"Think, my love, would my tongue and hands be enough? Must it be my cock?"

" _Yes."_ She arched up against him, all heat and want and then forced herself down again. "No. I don't know."

"Then might it be best to attempt to reach Maab? It is only a matter of time before one of us...gives in." Dracula's gaze drifted down over her features and he had to admit that he wasn't sure which one of them would break first.

He had ever been the type to have his cake and eat it. Immediately. Though Agatha was looking at him like she'd crawled across the desert and he was water.

"Very well," Agatha panted, "you're going to have to join our minds once more. Attempt to amplify my thoughts. Can you do that?"

"In theory. I think so." Dracula hesitated a moment, wondering how best to form the connection.

"Oh, just do it!" Agatha snapped, one hand spanning the back of his head and dragging him down towards her throat.

Dracula felt the growl roll up from his chest but this could not be one sided if it was to work. They weren't aiming to wander about the confines of his own mind, they were supposed to be heading out.

To that aim, he lifted one arm, baring his wrist to her and pushing it against her lips.

She bit deep in the same instant as he sank his fangs into the soft skin of her neck. The euphoria of the bite rolled out from him and in simultaneously and he was dragged under the riptide current of swamping sensation.

**_Into the Deep…_ **

Dracula flinched and hissed when he found himself abruptly bathed in sunlight.

“It’s in your mind, you pillock.” Agatha snarled at him and slapped him quite hard on the shoulder. Well, the shoulder of his mind. “I told you not to come.”

“This is not an exact science.” Dracula clipped at her in return, embarrassed that he had flinched like an untried boy.

He tilted his head to look up at the yawning blue sky overhead. It was so bright and hot that it was almost white. The sun viewed between the half closed span of his fingers gilded everything it touched in molten metal rays, shining through the pallid flesh of his hand as if he were once more truly alive. Dracula let loose a breath he still wasn’t certain he needed, listened to the slowing kick of his heart against his ribs and closed his eyes, dropping his hand. The sun beat down on his head and shoulders and he simply basked for a moment.

“Bliss.”

“At least one of us is happy.” Agatha grumbled. “Where are we?”

Dracula dropped his gaze from the heavens to look about the more earthly plane of the mindscape and he frowned when he was confronted with surroundings entirely alien to him. He frowned, looking about and then turned back to Agatha. His brows rose when he found her looking at him expectantly.

“I’ve never been here before.” He pressed a hand to his chest.

“Remind me the point of having you?” Agatha glared at him and planted her hands on her hips, turning to look out over the vista on which they found themselves.

She frowned. Inhaling deeply, she got a head full of dying and decomposing vegetation, wet loamy earth and the reek of an engorged river in sweltering heat. Indeed, a river nearly a mile across snaked past them. Barely a metre from their bare feet. The heat was stifling, the humidity seemed to block her airway and all around them the sounds of a jungle rose in a crescendo of animal calls, rushing wind and tumbling water.

“This is…nothing of Maab.” Agatha began to tense. They had not at all ended up anywhere near where she had thought they might. “Hers is a plane of air and darkness. It would look as her home would. Not this. Maab is many things, but not sweltering heat.”

Agatha bit her lip and wished she’d had better options. It had been a shot in the dark, projecting their minds outwards in search of a random connection. Like casting a line into an ocean storm and hoping to land a fish. The mental equivalent of screaming into the void.

Except, in the liminal space between waking and sleep, in the plane occupied only by humans when their minds wandered into the realm of nightmares…the void might well scream back.

At best.

“We should get out of here.” Agatha decided after a moment. Something of this was familiar. It nagged at the back of her mind and she felt the powerful need to be elsewhere. She knew not where they had wandered but the feeling of trespass was powerful.

“We haven’t found what we were looking for.” Dracula twisted away from looking at the river to frown at her. “Not like you to give up so easily, wife.”

“Don’t call me that and I don’t think we ended up here by mistake.” Agatha’s head was on a swivel. She was now certain they were not alone.

“Someone invited us?”

“That would be one of the more pleasant options, yes.” Agatha peered into the undergrowth of the jungle surrounding them in a patina of greens.

All she could see was green, all she could _smell_ was green. If there was something out there then it matched its surroundings perfectly and would be more than capable of sneaking up on unwary prey. Hell, considering some of the things she’d heard about in the mindscape, they might have no trouble taking down wary prey too.

“Things…hunt here? In the space between minds? Like a virus on the internet?”

“Think more of a black hole between planets.” Agatha edged closer to Dracula, she wished powerfully to have him at her back and it would be much easier if he’d stop attempting to paddle and take this threat seriously. “Every mind has its own presence, gravity, these things can be sensed by others in the void if they are attuned enough. Some things have evolved to be sensitive enough in order to sate their hungers. I’d rather not find out which it is that brought us here to an environment so suiting to it.”

“That is true. It seems very unfamiliar to us.” Dracula looked about the jungle. “It resembles nowhere I have been before.”

“It’s the Road to El Dorado.” Agatha said and realised it was true only when she had voiced it. “I’ve been here once before. El Dorado is a community of…creatures like us. Those that have no wish to mix with humans. It is _fiercely_ guarded. I was lucky to get there with all limbs still attached.”

“Seems odd.” Dracula turned to look down at her and Agatha shoved down the very real desire to throttle him.

“Which part?”

“The warning. If this place was so dangerous to you and you are familiar, why bring you here? Surely a mind eater would benefit more from giving you something more pleasant to look at. Oh, is that why _I’m_ here?” He grinned at her.

“I rather think it’s more the size of your ego. A mind killer will feast on the ego and yours must rival the size of most of the smaller continents.” Agatha drawled at him and it was in that moment of familiar habit that Dracula was ripped away.

He didn’t even have the chance to scream.

He was torn from the bank by an unbreakable hold on his ankle, dragged into the murk of the river and beneath the surface before he even had the chance to flail.

Agatha was mid leap over the churning water before she even realised she intended to rescue his idiotic self. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear, Dracula ends up useful at some point in this story. 
> 
> Honest. 
> 
> He's lucky he's a snack.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The introduction of some associates of Agatha's.

**Chapter 7 – No Diving**

Agatha soared over the river in her mind, arms out in front and her body stretched. She knifed into the water with barely a ripple and dived deep.

Plunging down, darkness closed around her, as dark as the water beyond the window of the cell their bodies currently resided in. She hung there a moment, hair clouding around her in the black, and let her eyes adjust to the gloom.

There!

A flash of a pallid hand in the depths.

Agatha tipped over her own toes and struck out with her arms. She powered down into the trap that the creature had set for her and Dracula.

She was hardly surprised that the beast, whatever it was, had gone for him first. He was several centuries her senior and she hadn’t been lying about the ego thing. Creatures in this realm fed off personality in the same way that Dracula did blood. The Count himself would be a veritable banquet for whatever creature it was that had ensnared him.

Agatha dived deeper and deeper into the depths. It wasn’t river water that she found herself. The scenery of the Amazon had been replaced by something more suited to the creature’s purposes. A pit of seemingly bottomless dark waters. Still and velvety, light filtering as if from far above.

Still, it was not bottomless and Agatha was not really swimming. She dug deeper with the power of her mind, delving further into the trap and determined to find her idiotic companion. As irritating as he was, she was still better off attempting to flee the Harkers with him at her side. Like it or not, they were in this together.

She caught a twist of movement, a muffled grunt and suddenly she was almost on top of them.

Agatha kicked out, swivelling to a stop when confronted with the streaming ribbons of blood inking through the water.

They both moved _impossibly_ fast. Dracula had far more experience in controlling himself in a realm much like this one after all. Who knew how long he had been wandering around the confines of his own mind and realising that in such a place his god complex might actually be warranted.

He fought viciously with whatever it was that attacked him. His fangs were bared, his eyes black and his claws sliced so fast through the water that streaks of crimson bubbles flared in their wake.

Agatha could not see that which he battled but it was _large_. Its presence even larger than Dracula and older by a factor. She could taste it in the ether around them. It made no sound as it tore at Dracula, seemingly intent on tearing him limb from limb and, whilst Agatha could identify with the desire, she needed him functional for a bit longer.

So she tackled it.

A silly notion, in hindsight, but the best she could come up with.

Agatha kicked off an imaginary wall in the water and speared forward. Her arms cinched around what might have been a slick torso (she was _really_ hoping no tentacles were involved) and she carried them both away from Dracula’s injured and hissing self.

The world tilted, shimmering light high above, black pit below, over and over and _wham_ right into a…carpet?

Agatha didn’t care, she tumbled away from her adversary, raking hard with her claws as she went and rolled back to her toes in one move. Dracula might have the weight of experience but Agatha was no neophyte. She knew how to stick her claws in deep and twist until something popped red and wet.

Agatha’s talons speared from her fingertips, her eyes burned letting her know they blazed gold, her fangs crowded her mouth like ivory knives and she threw back her head on a bellowing roar. A howling call so haunting that it rippled the illusion of a library around her and threatened to dispel it entirely. 

She’d ended more than one fight before it had even begun by nothing more than the appearance of enjoying the prospect of eating her opponent alive.

Dracula thudded to the floor, falling out of the part of the wilderness between minds that resembled a river. Agatha’s eyes narrowed to golden blue slits when she saw the blood streaming from every part of him.

A guttural hiss rattled from Agatha’s throat and she turned on the creature that had attempted to devour him in ribbons and slivers. She saw a hulking shape on the patterned carpet of the floor and lunged, her fangs bared and her claws ready to rend and tear.

_“STOP!”_

Agatha’s legs locked, so surprised by the familiar voice. She windmilled her arms, attempting to stop before flattening the smaller woman that appeared before her and landed rather gracelessly on her backside. Agatha, apex predator that she was, grumbled and winced when she realised she could bruise the mental equivalent of her tailbone if she wasn’t paying attention. She peered up at the woman towering over her, looking very cross with her indeed, and spoke only when her fangs had retracted enough and the glow receded from her eyes. 

“Elisa?”

“Finally. Some sense.” Elisa stood over Agatha, hands on her hips and looked generally displeased with matters as they stood.

Agatha blinked, the haze retreating from her vision and she stilled when she realised who was on the floor of the library in which they found themselves.

“ _Abraham?!”_

“Hello, Agatha.” Abraham Sapien lifted his head, holding one webbed hand over his ribs where she had caught him with her claws and managed a weary smile. “Nice to finally find you.”

“Abraham, I’m so sorry!” Agatha lunged to her feet and started towards the amphibian man as he struggled to a kneeling position.

Dracula had not been easy prey, after all. He had torn and bitten Abraham as much if not more than Agatha had. The amphibian humanoid slowly rose to his full height of over seven feet tall and winced at the blood streaming from his various wounds.

“It’s alright.”

“Is not.” Elisa snapped and glared at Agatha. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“I didn’t know who he was!” Agatha defended herself. “He grabbed Dracula and I thought he was one of the psychovores. I…was obviously mistaken.”

“Dracula?” Elisa frowned, her fingers flicking in an echo of the sign language she needed to use in the physical realm. “The beast has you?”

“Not for lack of trying.” Dracula grumbled wetly from the floor. He coughed and it was a decidedly unhealthy sound. He continued to speak into the carpet pile as he lay face down. “Don’t worry about me, wife. I am simply going to lie here and collect my thoughts.”

“Oh, get up, Abraham couldn’t have hurt you that badly.” Agatha snapped at him, embarrassed. “He wasn’t trying to kill you.”

“Ah, actually…” Abraham winced and Agatha spun back to look at him. “May have been trying to. Just…a little bit.”

“Why?” Agatha turned back to him.

“Big predatory mind all tangled around yours like his is? Of course I was going to kill him.” Abraham frowned, liquid black eyes blinking rapidly at her. “You’re not the type to…invite that kind of thing.”

“Oh. Well…I did. This one time.” Agatha shifted uncomfortably and then turned her irritation on Dracula as he was the more familiar target. “Will you get up? You’re embarrassing me in front of my colleagues. You’re supposed to be the Devil incarnate.”

“Harp, harp, harp, you could pick better wifely duties than these to get me to do your bidding, my love.” Dracula lifted his head from the floor and winced when something popped wetly in his neck and blood pattered onto the imaginary carpet. Come to think of it, imaginary blood. “Would this be the brother I learned so much about?”

Dracula lifted his gaze to get a proper look at Abraham and stilled with three rapid blinks when confronted with… _him?_

Abraham towered over everyone else in the room. He would stand a full head taller than Dracula once the Count managed to regain his feet. He was narrower about the shoulders but only marginally. He was long all over. His skin a patina of blues and greens on his arms, legs and back with a paler belly and chest. His hands and feet were webbed, fins trailing from his elbows and calves and frilled around his neck. His eyes were much larger than human, even if his skeletal structure had to be similar, his mouth had a distinctly fishy look to it and he wore nothing save for a very small and tight pair of black trousers.

“Let me guess, you’re a Pisces?”

“I should have let him kill you.” Agatha growled at him.

“I confess, dearest, I do not see the family resemblance.” Dracula peered up at Agatha.

“He is named for my brother, dolt. Get up. You’re not actually bleeding.”

“Feels like it. Help an old man?” Dracula lifted one hand to be helped to his feet and yelped when Agatha’s claws fisted around the scruff of his shirt and she dragged him up that way.

“This is imaginary silk, you know.” Dracula straightened his now rumpled white shirt that he wore and Agatha rolled his eyes.

“You shall have to imagine my caring.” Agatha gritted.

“You never mentioned the rampant sexual tension.”

Agatha froze and her eyes darted to Elisa. The smaller woman crossed her arms over her chest and smirked at Agatha.

Ah, still not forgiven for biting Abraham it would seem.

“No idea what you’re talking about.” Agatha spoke flatly.

“Yes, and the Pope isn’t a catholic in a dress.” Elisa shrugged one shoulder negligently and then turned to Dracula. She held out one hand on a toothy smile. “Elisa Esposito, heard so much about you.”

“You have me at an advantage, Miss Elisa.” Dracula, ever the gentleman, took her hand and bent over it in a courtly greeting.

“Several, I should think. You’ve met my husband, Abraham.” Elisa flicked her fingers in the towering fish man’s direction and Dracula raced him with a glance.

“Pleasure.” Dracula nodded and smiled tightly whilst trying to pinch a wound on his forearm closed.

“Delighted.” Abraham grunted, stretching carefully the newly healed flesh over his ribs. He turned to Agatha. “Are you well?”

“As can be expected. The Harkers have us.” Agatha could do without the witty banter. She’d much prefer to organise a rescue party instead.

Elisa sucked in a breath through her teeth, the delicate gills on her neck fluttering in response.

“The Harkers?! You were supposed to be deposing that idiot in Syria who thought he was the next, well, _him_!” Abraham waved expansively at Dracula.

“There is only one of me.”

“Not for lack of trying.” Agatha snapped.

“You seemed reluctant in the cell, dear one, but I will happily procreate with you as soon as you say the word.” Dracula grinned for her, forgetting all his wounds and not noticing how they scarred over themselves.

“She mentioned you had a thing for that.” Elisa noted and turned to look at Agatha. “Do you want rescued or…should we take our time?”

“I’ve been drugged.” Agatha growled. “I cannot feel it now but the effects are…difficult to ignore in the physical realm. It would seem the Harkers intend for us to be a breeding pair.”

“Very gross.” Elisa’s nose wrinkled.

“Where are you being held?” Abraham stepped closer and halted when Dracula’s lip lifted from his teeth in a response he could not seem to help. His hand rested on Agatha’s hip and what was more surprising was that she appeared to ignore that.

“We think in the North Sea on a repurposed Oil Rig.” Agatha shared what they had learned from the blood Dracula had drunk. “That is if the information we have is correct. We are being held in a waterbound cell. There is a very _large_ and hungry mermaid beyond our window preventing our escape via water. As near as we can tell, the cell is entirely cut off from the rest of the facility unless the elevator is activated. A tube that could perhaps hold two people at once but it would be a personal affair.”

“You haven’t seen anything outside the cell?” Elisa frowned, her mind already working. “Any detail might help.”

“I have only been in one other room. It was entirely white, tiles and steel. A torture room. I was bolted to a mortuary slab by their automatons and vivisected.”

“Vivisected?” Elisa stiffened.

“Automatons?” Agatha and Abraham echoed one another.

“The working theory is that they peeled me apart to see how I worked before they started my heart once more. I have a pulse and respiration like Agatha now.”

“Go back to the robots. You didn’t mention those before?”

“You were a little busy attempting to have your way with me.” Dracula spoke archly to Agatha. “Did you think mere humans could have put me into restraints? No. They had machines to do their dirty work. They were fully automated. Roughly human shaped but with pincers instead of hands. Turrets instead of heads.”

“That technology doesn’t exist.” Agatha frowned.

“If you say so.” Dracula shrugged a shoulder. “I know what I saw.”

“If that tech exists, we’ve never seen or heard of it. The Japanese are getting _close_ but no machine would be quick enough to catch you and pin you down. Not with the programming capabilities we have now. It is mimicry of human motion _or_ speed. Not both.” Abraham looked down at Elisa as if to confirm with her.

“I’ve never seen anything human sized that could be a threat to one of us. Too slow. Ungainly. Even I could run circles round one.” Elisa shrugged and rubbed at her chin a moment. “Is it possible you were drugged?”

“They do know how to sedate a vampire.” Dracula allowed on a nod. “Though I was not rendered dormant in any other way. I was vividly aware of what was happening until they pulled my heart out.”

Agatha jumped when all ten of her claws unsheathed seemingly of their own accord. She looked down at them, perplexed and forced them to retract back into their sheathes with a will. How odd.

“Okay, possible machine army. We’ve never fought really good robots before.” Elisa grinned at Agatha. “Anything else?”

“We’ve never heard anyone speak. Never even seen a human…it’s possible that we are in an entirely automated facility.” Agatha mused after a moment. “Difficult but not impossible. The Harkers have more money than most gods.”

“The mermaid said there were more like us in the facility. If she wasn’t lying.” Dracula pointed out. “At least some more giant fish people.”

“They might not be very pleased to see us, depending on who they are and how they got there.” Elisa hummed and nodded to herself. “We can go back to Broom with this. He’s been very worried.”

“It’s not like I did it on purpose.” Agatha huffed.

“Of course not, but you’re in a _lot_ of trouble for a former nun.” Elisa smirked.

“Blame this one.” Agatha jerked her chin towards Dracula and he grinned, pleased with himself and his finest creation.

“We intend to.” Abraham all but growled and Agatha smirked. Dracula simply raised an eyebrow at him.

“We can be there in a matter of hours. We’ve had a team on standby for search and rescue since you missed check-in. Hellboy and Broom will narrow down the location whilst we fly in to offer wetworks support.” Elisa nodded to her husband and he jerked his chin up in agreement.

Agatha growled.

“Sorry.” She touched at her throat. “Don’t know where that came from. I- -!”

She disappeared.

“Agatha!” Dracula whirled, snatching at the place she had stood and then rounded on Abraham and Elisa. “Where is she?!”

Elisa was actually staggered back by the force of his roar but it snapped Abraham out of his surprise.

“Something has happened to her body. You must wake up now!” He lunged forward and the palm of his hand struck Dracula square between the eyes.

Dracula was bowled backwards by the blow. He staggered, falling, falling, falling, and crashed gasping back into his body.

His body, pushed into the side of the tunnel where he and Agatha had been wrapped in one another’s minds.

In the tunnel and _alone_. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted Agatha to have a gal pal, I thought she'd like having a lady to speak with considering she spent the majority of her life in the company of women and seems to think men are a lot less charming than they think they are. 
> 
> As always though, two steps forward and one back with these two. 
> 
> Who has Agatha? What will they do to her?! WILL DRACULA HAVE A MELTDOWN!?!
> 
> Tune in next week to find out :D


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8 – Separation Anxiety**

**_Back in the Real World…_ **

Dracula flipped over onto his belly, arms stretching out and claws raking the soil, checking for any sign of his wife.

“Agatha?!” He called for her and then he heard it.

A hiss. A hiss like…the tube in the ceiling!

 _“AGATHA!”_ Dracula surged up onto all fours and scrambled for the mouth of the tunnel.

He exploded out into the cell proper in time to see one of the automatons dragging her for the tube that had extended down from the ceiling. She hung limply in its hold, her head lolling and a soft groan coming from her throat. She struggled to wake. They must have done something to her.

 _Hurt her_.

Dracula roared like a lion, the sound battering the padded walls and blackened glass looking out into the ocean deep. He hurled himself for the automaton, uncaring of his own safety, and slammed into the metal creature with a meaty thud of muscle meeting steel.

Agatha tumbled to the floor but Dracula already had hold of the automaton and there would be no friends to save it this time. One on one, he was confident he’d turn it into scrap for –what did they call it- recycling.

Dracula’s claws sparked as he raked them over the metal hide of the automaton again and again, scoring deep into the steely plates covering its body. When that did little, he closed his large hands around the turret of its head and began to _squeeze_.

His muscles stood out in his arms, shoulder and back, his teeth bared and his eyes flooded red, pupils shining silver. He growled low and lethal and ignored the pincered hands of the robot closing around his wrists, attempting to wrench his grip away even as the metal plating of the creature’s head began to buckle sickeningly inward.

Bones creaked in Dracula’s wrists but he ignored that sweet agony as the victory of crumpling metal was music to his ears. A savage grin lit his features, a bloodied snarl rolling from his chest.

He didn’t notice the first dart when it punched into his back.

He saw the second one as only a neon pink tufted nuisance sticking out of his biceps but did not loosen his grip, focused on crushing the tin can beneath him.

The robot’s struggles became seemingly more frantic. Whatever self-preservation programming it had ordering it to get out of its current predicament. It must have sensors telling it that destruction was imminent and getting out of dodge would be the best for all concerned. 

“Oh no, nowhere for you to run.” Dracula snarled, he didn’t hear the faint slur in his speech. “I’m going to crush you and anything else that comes down here and tries to hurt her. You hear me, Harkers? I’ll eat you all if you lay a hand on my wife.”

Another dart pierced his back but he paid it no mind. He was more intent on the way the turret buckled inward with a sudden jolt and…a whimper?

Dracula’s talons dug under the ruptured edge of the turret helm of the robot. He began to wrench it inexorably apart. It was muscle burning, back breaking, work but he was determined. He roared with the effort, convinced for half a second that his shoulders would come apart before the helmet did but then it tore free as if foil.

Dracula stared down at the software inside the automaton.

He coughed a laugh, delighted.

“Software indeed.” He grinned. “I’ll eat you raw.”

There was a human in the automaton. No, not robotic, an armour. Armour powered with servos and hydraulics but armour nonetheless. Armour sealed entirely so not even Dracula could scent the person inside. Not unless he tore it apart.

Dracula’s fangs were bared in gleeful threat, he was going to _enjoy_ some live dinner after the military style rations he had been allowed but…but…everything was a bit fuzzy.

Reaching into the helmet, swaying a little, Dracula batted away the flailing gauntlets of the guard’s automatic armour and closed a hand about the man’s face. He tore it off as an afterthought and flicked the fleshy mess from his claws. The bastard would keep.

Agatha. He needed to see to Agatha.

Dracula shook his head with an attempt to clear it. He sniffed, hoping sucking in air would help and attempted to shake it off when it seemed to make things worse. He toppled more than crawled off the body of the gurgling guard, slowly dying a death of shock and horror and dragged himself stubbornly towards his beloved.

“Ag…Agatha…” His legs didn’t seem to be working. How had he not noticed that? Well, he had been sitting on the man.

Crawling hand over hand, Dracula inched towards Agatha and he realised then that she must be under the same effects as he was. They had drugged her.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, he had _known_ they could do that. Known they could tranquilise them if they were of a need to.

Dracula snarled in denial but it was no use. The drugs thudded hot and syrupy through his veins, treacherously made functional by the same fiends that had drugged him in the first place.

He had always known that a heart that worked in any fashion was a weakness.

Dracula crashed to the floor, reaching for Agatha still, his fingertips brushing hers.

“Wife…” He rasped.

Her eyelids flickered but his were dropping closed and he could no more stop them sinking shut than he could halt the rising of the sun above the water.

They were going to take her.

They were going to take her and there was nothing he could do.

It would seem the Harkers were never going to stop surprising him with their ability to wound him.

Darkness took him but it was not the familiar cloak of the night that he had come to view as his ally in centuries past.

He was alone and he feared more than anything that he would be alone again when he woke.

**_Later…_ **

Agatha jolted awake, the drugs wearing off shockingly fast. She twisted and saw one of the robotic guards Dracula had described pulling a syringe from her arm.

Of course. Something to put her under and another thing to bring her up again. Lovely.

Agatha looked about herself and found herself in a room much like that which Dracula had described. Sterile and white. Minimal furnishings and automatic guards flanked either side of the steel table she was strapped down to. Agatha let loose a slow breath when she looked down her body and saw that her clothing had been changed to that of a hospital style gown. Her jaw clenched when she saw that her legs were raised and her ankles manacled into stirrups.

“Delightful.” Agatha glanced at her captors and spoke from around bared fangs. “I don’t suppose it would help to tell you that my kind don’t really need gynaecologists?”

No response from the six foot tall chess pieces on either side of her.

“Never realised how much I missed the witty banter until there was none.” Agatha let loose a slow breath and reminded herself she’d been in worse situations.

She swallowed hard when she saw the rows upon rows of sterile steel instruments laid out on tray tables beside the bed she was on. There was something that looked very like an automated saw, scalpels, pliers, forceps and some worryingly empty silver kidney dishes that looked very like they expected to be filled with something.

“Nice lab.” Agatha looked beyond the trays of sharp and pointies and elected to ignore them until they became pertinent to her existence. “Mine is nicer, but it’s alright. If you’re going for steampunk mad scientist, I suppose.”

The automatons ignored her, standing at parade rest, and she wasn’t surprised that she gained no response. In all honesty, she was surprised that the things could stand under their own power, never mind walk about and drag her drugged self out of her cell.

It must have been able to walk, then crawl, then carry her with one arm and crawl _backwards_ out of the tunnel to get to the tube which had presumably carried them both out of the cell.

Now _that_ was impossible.

Walking around was all well and good. There were currently little Japanese robots that could do that if they were given five minutes to think about it. Quadruped robots in Boston could gallop on all fours, jump over obstacles and even right themselves when shoved…but they were always connected to super computers. The millions of minute calculations required to mimic animal movement alone meant being hooked up to a Dell that would have dwarfed most buses.

The only super computer, in fact, that was capable of such calculations was a noodly lump of grey matter that supposedly resided between the ears of most humanoids.

Agatha narrowed her eyes at her guards and studied them. No connecting cables. No hardline connection to something large enough to complete the processing power they would need.

Which meant…

Agatha cocked her head, listening intently. She inhaled deeply through her nose, tilting her head back and scenting the air. She took in great pulls of disinfectant, bleach, surgical alcohol, sterilising solution, metal and… _there_.

Sweat.

Ah, and a heartbeat.

Faint, but there.

Agatha focussed on the sounds and inhaled deeply again. The heartbeats she could just barely hear through metal plating were rapid. The sweat was acrid, afraid. They were rank with fear.

Oh, whatever Dracula had done when he had found out she had been taken had obviously educated them on how fierce he could be. Perhaps their captors were beginning to realise that they had only trapped Dracula for a time and even then only because he had been baited so willingly into their net.

Well, she couldn’t have him stealing all the fun.

“Oh, boys, I’m almost sorry for you.” Agatha looked between her two guards. “You’ve no idea what you’ve done. You’re never going to see your families again.”

The _faintest_ tremor ran through one of them and Agatha grinned wicked and fierce when she saw it. Any doubts she’d had about imagining heartbeats and sweat on her guards evaporated. They really were just men in suits of armour. Boys with their toys.

And Agatha was more than practiced at dealing _with those_.

“Now, if you’re _very_ lucky, I’m going to kill you before my husband gets up here.” Agatha was particularly proud over how she didn’t stumble over naming Dracula as such to her. “I’ll make it quick, at least. He does ever so love to play with his food. He’s a gourmet, you see, likes to make them last.”

Agatha examined the cuffs that restrained her to the bed. Padded metal of some description. She thought it a little absurd that they had padded it so that her delicate wrists and ankles didn’t get chafed whilst they sawed her in half but perhaps this sort of medical torture device was bought in bulk from some shady warehouse somewhere.

She was strong, she knew she was, but she was also recently fed. Very well fed. Dracula might be many things but lacking in personality was not one of those. Agatha would hesitate to say that she fed upon the soul but she certainly devoured the same force that gave everything life. Even the undead. Now that Dracula was _not_ dead he was powerful indeed.

And he had fed from her as she had him.

Agatha had never done that before. She had never fed from one as they had done her. It had always been taking with her. She had devoured and never given anything back. She was intrigued to feel… _empowered_ by such an exchange.

Her fingers flexed, claws flashing in the clinical light, and rolled her wrists in her restraints. She doubted the humans in their suits could hear, but there was the slightest creak from the metal encircling her.

Interesting.

The door to the lab swished open and Agatha twisted her head to see who was coming to visit.

She felt rather stupid when something plummeted in her chest and she realised only then that she had been hoping that Dracula had made some sort of miraculous escape. He was rather good at those.

She quashed the thought immediately. She was hardly some damsel in distress.

Distress, perhaps, but she was certainly too tall to be a damsel.

“Good morning.” The human strode into the room and stopped not far from her. The woman was smaller than Agatha, frizzy reddish hair, the scent of blood lingered faintly under the woman’s soap that she had used in the shower and Agatha’s gaze immediately dropped to the source. A bandage around her right hand.

Agatha and the woman studied one another for a moment and Agatha glanced at her guards when no further introductions were made.

“You know, for a bunch of mad scientists, you are all sorely lacking in the nefarious monologuing department.” Agatha lifted a sardonic brow.

“Apologies,” the woman shook herself, “I’m Doctor Bloxam. I’m in charge of this facility.”

Agatha’s head tilted minutely at the… _tone_ she heard in those words. Something illicit and satisfied. Recently promoted, she would guess. Middle management also. In her experience, such middle management were always promoted precisely one level above that which their competency covered.

She was about to be proven right.

“You look _very_ like her. If not for the hair and the claws, I’d have said you were mirror images.” Bloxam tilted her head as she approached the bed. “Incredible, genetics, isn’t it?”

“Quite.” Agatha felt a frown tug at her brow but didn’t let it take hold. She had been introduced to a human without armour which meant they thought her secured without chance of escape.

More fool them.

“I speak of your niece, of course. A few generations removed but Zoe really does look quite like you.”

Agatha merely blinked at the mention of her extended family. She was hardly close with the girl but she certainly knew of her kin. She had kept tabs, helped out with bills when required (one accrued a great deal of interest simply by existing for years on end) and generally kept her pride to herself. Zoe was a doctor, she knew that much but she’d had little idea that the girl had been associated in any way with the Harkers.

“You do look a great deal healthier, of course.” Bloxam grinned. “Then again, you’re not dying of a rare form of bone cancer.”

Agatha stilled. She hadn’t known that. Again, that _tone_ from Bloxam. Something satisfied and the faintest hint deranged.

“Cancer.” Agatha repeated numbly. Her kind were not afflicted with such things, but she knew well of the disease that killed so many. She could taste it in the blood if she fed upon someone with it.

She had done so. Once. At the request of a dear friend. Eased the passing of someone they had loved dearly. Let him slip away on pleasant dreams and painless euphoria.

“Did you do it?” The question was out of her before Agatha realised her suspicions. “Did you poison my niece to use against me?”

“Of course I wouldn’t.” Bloxam’s eyes narrowed a little. Offended. Honestly. “We’re not the monsters here.”

“Ah. Of course not. My mistake.” Agatha let loose a slow breath and looked about the lab, mentally deciding which one to kill first. “You just capture and torture people for the hell of it, right?”

The nearest guard should truthfully be the first to go. He might get to her and attempt to restrain her before the other could. Still, Bloxam and her blinkered fanaticism was something of a favoured flavour to Agatha. There had been a time in her life when she had cut a bloodied swath across Europe feasting on the same.

Though she was in control.

The nearest armoured guard would go first. Then the other and she’d pounce on Bloxam last before she even made it the four steps to the door out of the lab.

“You’re not _people_.” Bloxam snapped. “You’re fit for only one thing; bettering the rest of us. You’re the lucky one. We’re going to keep you alive for a little while. _You_ have something to offer.”

“Oh?” Agatha was hardly interested in the nefarious plan and maniacal laughter. She was mentally cataloguing precisely how she was going to reduce Bloxam to the consistency of overcooked spaghetti. She let the woman talk.

“Of course. You’re a fertile female. Literally a breeding ground for the raw materials we can use for medicines, gene therapy, regenerative treatments. The stem cells from your unborn spawn will offer countless cures to humanity. Hell, we might even find something to help people like Zoe.” Bloxam offered on a cheery smile. “Not in time to help her, of course, but perhaps others.”

“Stem cells?” Agatha tuned abruptly back into broadcast programming. “Unborn- -?”

“Why do you think we turned Dracula fertile? We wanted him to breed you. Now that’s over, you get to stay up here until we can harvest what we need of you.”

“Harvest.” Agatha uttered in a low voice that had heralded the death of what must have been thousands by now.

Bloxam continued on.

“Hmm, fascinating things, concubi. Capable of completely harmonious energy transference between compatible couples. Now that you’re bonded, you and Dracula could in theory survive off one another indefinitely. He feeds on your excessive red blood cell production and you on his feral energy. You may have noticed that you feel a lot calmer after having bonded with him. That’s because your kind isn’t meant to be unpaired.” Bloxam grinned. “Imagine that in humans? We’d solve world hunger.”

“You could do that by abolishing capitalism.” Agatha snapped, offended for some bizarre reason. She knew not if it was because Bloxam thought she was bonded to Dracula or that she knew so much about their kind and how they might use that to the advantage of the human race. “Any one of your billionaires could solve it in an afternoon without damaging their networth but you’d rather bottle a cure that you could sell?! Disgusting.”

“Of course we would. That kind of systemic change would cause turmoil and strife. Our way means that people get to live in harmony.”

“You are utterly bonkers, you know that?” Agatha growled. “If I had _weeks_ I could not explain everything wrong with that!”

“Well, you do have weeks, but only weeks.” Bloxam shrugged a shoulder. “You see you’re on bed rest for a while, until the pups are mature enough to offer a decent harvest of stem cells. Then, of course, we will have to do away with you. Concubi can become fiercely maternal and we’d rather not deal with that nonsense.”

“God help me, but I am certainly going to enjoy killing you.” Agatha all but growled, her pupils flashing gold. “You and everyone in here.”

“Not likely, those are titanium alloy. Not even Dracula could break through them.”

Agatha bared her teeth on a snarled response but it was drowned out by the sudden klaxon wail of sirens blaring all around them. Bloxam staggered back a step, looking up in alarm.

“What the hell?!” A sudden lurch sent Bloxam staggering. “That’s a breach alert! Are we taking on water?!”

Bloxam clutched the edge of Agatha’s bed in order to stay upright and she had forgotten. She had forgotten that they had not _secured_ Agatha as they had Dracula.

Agatha lunged, blood sprayed and Bloxam fell gurgling to the floor, her throat in tatters. She clutched madly at it, trying to piece it back together. Staring wildly up at Agatha, her face a mask of crimson splatter.

With a roar, Agatha wrenched her arms and legs free of her restraints, the manacles peeling apart easily under her strength. The armoured guards rushed her but they were slow and clumsy in their pneumatic suits. She bounded over the head of the first, latching onto his back and tearing off the bulk there that she guessed was an oxygen tank.

He failed, gas hissing from his suit, and staggered to the floor. Agatha was already on the second. She swung the oxygen tank into the turret helm and sent him flying. He soared across the room, smashing into the white tiled wall and crumpling to the ground. Agatha crossed the room in an instant, heaving the oxygen tank over her head, plumes of gas spewing everywhere and clouding the room around her. She brought it down onto the head of the prone guard, crumpling the metal there like cardboard with the first thunderous blow.

Then she hit him again.

And again and again and again.

Agatha yowled in surprise when metallic arms closed about her middle, pinning her arms to her sides. She was hauled up off the floor, bare feet kicking and the now blood stained tank clattering to the floor. She screamed in denial, bloodstained fangs flashing, and twisted like an eel.

The guard struggled to hold onto her, twisting wildly as she was and they crashed to the floor in a tangle of metal and limbs. Agatha was pinned beneath his bulk momentarily, struggling to be free and stilled a half moment when a gun was suddenly thrust into her face.

Bloxam wheezed on the other end of the pistol, holding her throat together with her bandaged hand. She looked Agatha dead in the eye.

The sound of the gun going off was deafening as she took her shot. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH THE DRAMA!
> 
> Well, we're getting to the bloodshed you've all been after. 
> 
> Hang tight, folks, it gets MUCH worse before it gets better. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9 – She’s About 90% of His Impulse Control**

**_Down in the Cell…_ **

_He had to get out._

Dracula snapped back to consciousness, those words burned into his mind and he lunged upright in one move.

He stared wildly about himself, knowing the cell was empty of all other inhabitants before he even finished looking.

The place was trashed. Furniture shattered, the padded walls shredded and blood pooled black and sticky everywhere.

Dracula wrinkled his nose when it offered no temptation for him and lunged to his feet. His hands opened and closed into clawed fists by his sides again and again. His chest heaved with every breath and a low growl rumbled from him in a near constant roll of thunder. His eyes were flooded red, his pupils a shimmering silver and his fangs bared.

They had her.

They _had Agatha_.

Instinct roared through him, tearing at his insides with red hot claws and the burning desire to be free. He had been repressing it since he had willingly walked into this prison but now that Agatha was gone. Now that _they_ had her and were doing who knew what to her…well. His patience was done and he was prepared to commit all manner of atrocities to get his own way.

Dracula strode to the centre of the room, to where the sweeping trails of blood led and ended, and looked up. He could barely see it, where the tube of elevator they used to get them in and out of the cell met seamlessly with the ceiling.

A droplet of blood smeared was his only clue.

With a snarl, Dracula leapt up, his claws punching into the padded tiles of the ceiling and biting deep to find purchase. He scrabbled until his talons found something to hook around and then curled upward, his feet braced against the ceiling as he hung upside down and examined the one way out of the cell that he knew of.

He savaged the padding. Tore it away in great hanks and plumes of insulated stuffing. He snarled low and vicious, uncaring of the torture it put his claws through and ripped at the ceiling until the hub of the lowest edge of the tube was revealed. He clawed at it, sparks flying from his fingertips as his steely talons glanced off the metallic edge. He dug into the softer edges around the metal until he met more metal and his claws could go no further. He bit at it, he howled in rage and he tore, but it was no use.

With a roar, Dracula twisted away, dropping to the floor and howling in rage. He surged forward, lashing out at the couch and snapping it cleanly in half with a single blow. The spine of the wooden frame snapping like kindling under his strength.

Half mad and barely lucid, he stared about himself. He forced himself to breathe. To _think_. He had gotten them into this. He had walked into this prison thinking he had known that he could get out any time and he refused for his confidence to become hubris. To lose it would mean that he had lost Agatha and he _would not_.

Agatha.

Just the thought of her calmed him a little even as part of him was borderline rabid to have her back. He needed to keep it together. For her. If he did not, if he could not get to her, then the Harkers would have her to experiment on and he would not have it. He wouldn’t.

What would she do? She was very clever, that wife of his, she would know how to get out.

He ignored the snarky voice that told him she’d have surely done so already if she could have but things had been transpiring and he was confident that she hadn’t only because she had been distracted by him.

He was very distracting, after all.

What did Agatha do? When she was backed into a corner. She…

Dracula stilled, the red receding from his eyes as storm clouds do over the horizon. His gaze darted to the fourth wall of their cell. The lightless black window that peered out into the darkened abyss of water beyond.

Agatha, when she was in trouble, made allies. She gathered people to her and she turned them into an army.

It was a talent Dracula had either never had or forgotten he had possessed. He had certainly commanded armies before but they had worked for him, that had been different. He had been a warlord of no small power and the weak flocked to power in order to borrow from its shadow. To be protected.

Agatha’s followers were not like that. They pooled their strength with hers and they were altogether quite terrifying because of it.

The nuns, even if he had quickly dispatched them once dear Johnny had let him in, had never once faltered in their faith. Not before or after seeing him in all of his monstrous glory. They had died because of the wolves, not because he had broken them. Even when he had taken their mother superior’s head, even when he had literally decapitated their leadership, they had stood against him.

He could not claim that seasoned soldiers would have done the same under his or any other banner. That had not been how wars were fought in his time.

So he didn’t have an army. Mere details.

What he _did_ have…was charm.

There was another very clear way out of the cell, after all. One that had been staring them in the face since day one.

They had just chosen not to use it because…because the situation had not yet called for it.

Hesitation was a foreign concept to Dracula so he wasted no time.

He strode across the cell, leaving bloodied footprints on the padded floor, hauled back and swung with all of his might.

His fist slammed into the glass with a reverberating thud that rattled him all the way to his teeth. Dracula snarled, unfazed by the way the glass shuddered but did not give. He was determined.

_THOOM!_

He rammed his fist into the glass once more. His bones creaked and he thought his muscles might have popped somewhere but he was rewarded with the tiniest splinter in the glass.

So he hit it again. And again.

The same spot, over and over. A crack appeared, fine as a spiderweb, but he was not to be undone. Progress was progress. He battered both fists into the glass, laying siege upon it until –finally- something in it gave.

A tiny splinter, a bare sliver, of glass flew from the wound he had won of it and smacked him sharply in the chest. A jet of water, salty and sweet with beckoning freedom, gushed after it. He was splattered and soaked within seconds but he smashed at the glass again.

He tore at the glass, slicing into his fingers and chipping his claws but he didn’t care. He pulled a fist sized chunk from the reinforced glass and was staggered back by a jet of saltwater as thick as his own forearm punching him in the chest. He splashed backwards, water pouring into the cell and grinned, panting hard.

In the dim of the water, far beyond the broken window, he saw the thrum of a bloodied red light.

 _Ariel_.

Dracula grinned.

“Heeeere, fishy, fishy, fishy…”

This was going to be fun.

**_Upstairs…_ **

Agatha twisted when she saw Bloxam’s finger tighten on the trigger of the gun. She jinked madly to the side and felt the bullet burn her ear as it whizzed past her to smash into the faceplate of the guard behind her.

His metal limbs slackened, in surprise or shock at being shot in the face and Agatha was free in an instant. She swarmed across the floor, smacking the gun away, yanking Bloxam’s hand from her neck and sank her teeth into the ruin of the human’s throat without an instant of hesitation.

She drank deep, draining Bloxam in great sucking pulls and dropped the woman to the floor when she felt the life leave her.

Agatha lifted her head with a low snarl and turned to observe the guard behind her.

Dead. He had removed his faceplate in order to breathe since she had pulled off his oxygen tank and being shot in the face was deadly to most humans. He wore a neat hole in the middle of his forehead and a grey and pink slop was leaking out of his helmet and onto the floor.

The sirens still wailed overhead and there was something of a worrying tremor to the floor beneath her. If she listened hard, she could hear the shouts of panic beyond the lab. Something was certainly going on and she had little doubt as to who was behind the utter pandemonium. Dracula had always had a flare for the dramatic and bloodshed. It would surprise her not at all to find him behind this somehow.

Not that she had needed the distraction, Agatha reminded herself as she padded to the door of the cell and examined it, she had been doing just fine on her own. She’d have gotten her claws on Bloxam one way or the other, even without the help of Dracula…doing whatever he had done to reduce the structural integrity of an _oil rig_.

Now that she thought on it, that was a trifle concerning. They were in the middle of the ocean and their prison was falling apart around their ears. Which was all well and good and had been on the cards anyway but Agatha’s hazy plan had very much involved not being _inside_ same prison at the time of mass destruction.

“I swear, this is like the _Demeter_ all over again.” Agatha grumbled to herself and hissed out a breath of annoyance when she found the lock to be biometric.

An obstacle but not insurmountable.

“Doctor Bloxam, I’m afraid I need a hand.” Agatha turned back to the woman’s corpse. “Or perhaps a head, one never knows when two minds shall be better than one.”

Agatha padded across the room to gather up the pieces of Bloxam she required.

Whatever Dracula was doing, he was certainly causing enough of a distraction to allow her to escape unhindered. No one had come pounding through the door to attempt to restrain or sedate her once more. No one seemed interested in her at all. 

Typical male.

Still, she did her best work when he was wrapped up in his own ego.

**_Meanwhile, Back With Dracula…_ **

Dracula squinted against the blistering speed of the saltwater against his eyes. His hands, arms and back screamed with the effort of holding onto the somewhat bizarrely named Ariel as she powered up through the water.

Deep thrumming wails came from somewhere within the cavern of her great chest. Dracula wrapped one arm more securely around the dorsal fin spearing upwards from where the waist might be on a human.

Ariel’s great voice rang out through the ocean around them and he could _feel_ the echo of it rattling in his skull and jangling that part of his head that let him wander out amongst the space between waking and dreams.

She was calling someone. Something. He knew not what and he quite frankly did not care. So long as she kept up her end of the deal.

Dracula’s lungs were beginning to burn and he resented once more that he’d been brought back to something like life for this. Things had been much easier when he hadn’t had to breathe at all. Then again, Agatha hadn’t been nearly so attracted to him before the whole pulse and respiration thing so he’d take what he could get.

He was dimly aware of a haunting answering call from somewhere out in the dark but then Ariel twisted in the water and he realised they were at their destination.

The lowest part of the oil rig.

Ariel thrummed a deep sound, swirling around the rig like blood in the water and she crooned a question to him.

He was sure?

Well, he thought that was what she was asking. Communication between them was still something of a primitive affair and was based roughly on the targets of their bloodlust happening to be the same.

Ariel had the brute strength to make it happen and Dracula had the knowledge of how humans built things in order to get her _inside_.

Dracula struggled hand over hand up over Ariel’s back as she twisted in the water. He deftly avoided some sort of biting eel that lived in the depths of her mane of hair and clutched at her shoulder. She didn’t appear to mind or even notice the bite of his claws as he struggled for grip on her slick skin but she did turn her oddly flat face to look at him with gigantic black eyes.

He pointed up, his night vision picking out a pinprick of light in the encompassing dark. Chances were, what he was looking for would be lit up for the ease of humans finding it.

Ariel nodded, a gesture she had learned from Agatha or himself and surged upwards. They avoided the tube that connected the cell far below to the rig, Dracula knew that would be expected and they headed instead for another point of ingress. Hence, looking for a little patch of bright in the dark.

Ariel undulated through the water, rising swiftly until she hung less than a meter from their goal. She cocked her huge head, studying the slim access hatch left over from the days when the rig had been used for its original purpose. Dracula stretched up over her, wrapping his hand in her mane to keep anchored.

The red light that bled from Ariel was just illumination enough to see and Dracula squinted to read the writing in the hazy light.

_PULL TO OPEN_

Well, didn’t mind if he did.

Dracula fisted a hand around the hatch lever, which must have been originally installed for maintenance or access, and yanked. His muscles bunched, preparing to battle against the pressure of the ocean but the panel slid apart with surprising ease, leaving a circle of light beyond and the ripple of water meeting air.

Ariel hissed in displeasure, dropping a few feet in the water to avoid the light. A habit Dracula could identify with but he had more pressing concerns.

Plucking a crab from his forearm, he shoved it back into the mass of Ariel’s hair and kicked off her shoulder and up into the access hatch.

His head broke the surface and someone promptly shot him.

Dracula lunged out of the water without further hesitation, blood trailing behind him from the wound on his ear. He did believe he was now missing a good portion of it. With a roar, he was across the room and on his attacker in an instant.

Some sort of security personnel. They were dressed in simple black fatigues and carried automatic weaponry. Dracula jinked left, right, up onto the ceiling and then pounced onto the man in the time it took for the poor fellow to blink. The human folded up beneath him like a broken accordion and Dracula tossed him unerringly towards the hatch behind him without missing a beat. He lunged for the second soldier, ignoring the bullets ripping into his chest and fastened his fangs around the man’s throat instead.

Using this body as a shield, Dracula moved from one soldier to the next. Rending them limb from limb and working his way deeper into the room.

He was breathing hard by the time he was done, his chest stung horribly and his ear was ringing where it had been shot but he was alive –still- and _pissed._

Turning back to look at the hatch he had come through, Dracula saw Ariel’s huge hand patting the floor around the hatch. He tossed another body her way and watched as it was dragged into the water which frothed pink.

Poor thing, they really hadn’t been feeding her well at all.

Now, to see about letting her in.

This part of his plan had relied on the excessive preparedness of his captors but considering how well his cell had been thought out, Dracula didn’t think that would be a problem.

He turned to the fallen soldiers, rifling through their pockets and pouches. He found several egg shaped objects that some hazy blood memory told him was a…a… _grenade_. Went boom if borrowed memory served and, ooh, something with the blocky helpful words of _FACE TOWARD ENEMY_ written upon the grey face of it.

“Nice. Very nice.” Dracula gathered up his spoils and pushed the rest of the soldiers out through the hatch. The sinking bodies would occupy Ariel long enough for him to see about making a doorway big enough to fit her bulk.

He knew that she could survive in an oxygenated environment. He had seen that when she had pushed into his half flooded cell and had attempted to eat him. It had been a hairy few moments to forge a connection with her and make sure that they both wanted the same thing and had better chances of getting it if they worked together.

He still wasn’t entirely certain that she wasn’t going to eat him when she was done but needs must and all that.

Dracula packed the explosives around the lip of the hatch, the water frothing and crimson beneath. He searched a moment for how to detonate his little pile of destruction and then pulled the pins from the grenades in quick succession.

Honestly, why give him the blood of trained soldiers?

Just silly really.

Dracula darted across the room, finding a bulkhead to hide behind, clapped his hands over his ears and opened his mouth as some helpful soldier’s memories told him to do.

The explosion was _incredible_.

Dracula, even behind the bulkhead, was thrown into the wall by the red hot gust of force that came from the explosives. The floor of the access room was torn apart into warped slag and shrapnel and it was lightning reflexes and luck that saved him from being harpooned. The entire rig appeared to heave with the explosion and his ears were blown out alongside the floor.

Dracula staggered upright after a long and ringing moment. He could hear nothing, his balance was shot and there was a very insistent ringing echoing around his skull. He blinked rapidly, centring himself and was brought back to the more pressing concerns of the moment when water sloshed around his ankles.

The frigid shock of it snapped him back into reality. He followed the trail of the water and saw Ariel greedily hauling herself through the hole he’d made in the floor for her.

The hole that was letting the room rapidly fill with water.

Ah. He hadn’t thought of that.

A faint notion about air pressure and how it was important to maintaining the whole water on the _outside_ of the rig niggled in his head but he didn’t have the whole memory and so dismissed it as unimportant.

He wasn’t planning on staying anyway.

“This way, old girl!” Dracula spun drunkenly on unsteady legs, his hearing coming back to him in pops and starts as his eardrums attempted to reconstitute and made for the door.

So the oil rig was flooding and that hadn’t been part of the plan. Agatha would be cross but he was rather hoping the fact that he had made a friend with her pet fish might make up for that.

Dracula accidentally pulled the door off the hinges when he staggered to it and yanked it open but destruction of private property really was the least of his worries.

He lunged through it, hearing shouts as if through a bubble and darted forward when a soldier rounded the dim corridor. He slammed the smaller man into the wall, this one without the automaton armour as well, tore the gun from his hands and then pitched him wildly over his shoulder.

The man’s screams dissolved into bubbling gurgles as Ariel seized him in her talons, shoved his entire torso into her mouth and snipped him in half with a tousle of her head. Blood and viscera splashed everywhere. Dracula winced in sympathy but rather the soldier than him.

That had been the deal, after all. Because Ariel was so _very hungry_.

Dracula hurried forward again, very aware of Ariel finishing her latest morsel and slithering after him along the corridor. It was a tight fit for her, she crammed herself into it and he suspected it was only the gelatinous slick that covered her whole body that allowed her to squeeze along the corridor in his wake. She dragged herself along the floor incredibly quickly for a creature of such bulk. Hand over hand, her talons gripping the bulkhead lips in the corridor and heaving her along as her tail thrashed like a snake to propel her.

Dracula, for his part, kept going _up_.

He could faintly smell Agatha, over the piscine rot of Ariel and the blood that she washed the decks with. She was somewhere above them and he’d rather get to her before Ariel forgot their deal in her feeding frenzy.

He met more and more soldiers on his way, bullets thundering into his chest and arms, piercing his stomach but he had little time for that. He snapped those in half that he could and hurled those he couldn’t behind him into Ariel’s waiting maw. She snaffled them up like a terrier would rats and grasped hungrily for more. Going so far as to reach beyond Dracula and snatch the soldiers up before they even reached him.

Dracula ducked into the first side corridor he came across and let Ariel overtake him. She seemed entirely unaware of his absence and gleefully barrelled along the corridor, destabilising walls and structural integrity in her wake. She snatched up soldiers and gulped them down happily. She seemed to have entirely forgotten about her urge to find her family or whoever it was the Harkers held in this place to keep her docile, but Dracula had not.

He waded out into the corridor when it was safe to do so, the water above his knees and strength sapping in its frigid chill. He surged forward, digging deep for the memories of the soldiers whose blood he’d had and how to get _up._

There were twists and turns, it was a circuitous route to the decks above but he didn’t care and he didn’t stop. When he could, he snatched up the people he found along the way and bled them dry. They tasted less than beneficial under the circumstances and it occurred to him that he perhaps did not know how to feed his new biology but that was a problem for later.

Dracula was hurled sideways into the railing of the ladder he climbed when another explosion rocked the entire rig. He caught his already fragile ribs and a bullet plinked out of his side and clattered to the floor, bouncing down into the water beneath him.

“Bloody hell, only madmen explode things in oil rigs.” Dracula growled, briefly hoping that Ariel was still causing enough of a distraction to keep the bulk of the soldiers from coming his way and hurled himself out into a corridor that seemed a little more…refined.

Dracula leaned heavily into the wall, breathing hard and riddled with pain.

If this was being alive again, he’d rather not.

“Labs?” Dracula read the stencilled black writing over his head and frowned. He scrubbed saltwater from his eyes and shook himself, forcing himself to think. “Labs! Yes. Want those.”

Dracula shoved himself along the corridor, bracing himself against either wall and not even pausing to yank another bullet out of his flesh on his way. He tossed it aside with a grumbling growl and slithered to a halt only when a door to his left suddenly hissed apart.

His lips lifted from his teeth, fully prepared to tear into whoever was on the other side and he stalled, all the air leaving him when he found who he was looking for. A grin spread over his mouth.

“Agatha.” He breathed her name in a far softer tone than he would ever readily admit to and wavered uncertainly when she only stared at him with wide blank eyes. Something tumultuous in her gaze that he couldn’t name. “Agatha? Did they hurt you?”

She was dressed in a paper like gown, tied at the back of her neck and that appeared to be it. Blood splattered her face and neck, soaking into the front of the gown. Her hair was a mad tangle, her eyes gleaming gold and she held the severed head of what looked very much to be Doctor Bloxam in one hand. Her eyes roved over him, hitching on the bloodied mess of his torso, the odd angle of one of his wrists that he hadn’t gotten around to setting straight yet.

“Agatha. Speak to me.” He stepped cautiously towards her, unsure of how he would be received and was altogether unprepared for her to move _toward him_.

“Mine.” She growled, dropping the head in one hand and tunnelling her fingers into his hair.

Dracula was barrelled across the corridor, Agatha wrapped around him like a creeping vine and her mouth pressed hot and needy to his.

Dracula growled after a stunned second, forgetting the near drowning, the mermaid in the bowels of the oil rig, forgetting the flooding and the mad scientists and being torn apart and brought back to life. He forgot all of that because Agatha had him in her arms and she kissed him like an angel before its Fall.

Dracula cradled her head in his hands, his claws raking softly in her hair. Her mouth moved against his with far more fervour than finesse but he found that oddly charming. Her tongue slid into his mouth as if she owned him and he supposed she did rather. He clung to her, letting her kiss him, cling to him, cleave to him.

Realising that a warzone was a stupid place to get distracted only when the metal speared through her chest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I promise you bloodshed? Did I promise you gore, body horror and injury?
> 
> YES I DID INDEEDY.
> 
> I also promised the Soft and Kisses and Cuddles. 
> 
> Get yoself a fic writer that can do both ;)


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I discovered recently that what had been thought to have been a translation of the original Dracula text into Icelandic was in fact a rewrite by the lad doing the translating. Apparently he added more drama and eroticism to the original text and legit ghosted a fanfic for Stoker to publish in Iceland. 
> 
> Beautiful.

**Chapter 10 – Silver and Sunlight**

“Fucker!”

Agatha wrenched away from Dracula, gaping down at the metal stake now sticking out of her shoulder. She snarled in pain, her hand closing around the silvery tip of it and wrenched it free of flesh and bone.

“ _Fu-uck!_ ” Agatha nearly whimpered, barely aware of Dracula’s blur of movement.

He disappeared from where she’d had him so pleasantly pinned against the wall. There was a bellowing roar, a scuffle of sound and then a wet snap of movement. Agatha pinched the wound on her shoulder closed and turned to see Dracula looking at the soldier hanging limp in his hands.

The man’s neck had been wrenched so fully around the wrong way that it was a miracle that it had not been removed entirely, dangling from his torso in a corkscrew of tortured flesh and pulverised bone. Dracula growled low in his throat, seemingly disappointed in having killed the man so quickly, but dropped the body in favour of turning back to Agatha.

His eyes landed on her, fastening on her hand pressed to her wound and then to the silver metal stake in her free hand. She tossed it aside as he watched and mustered a smile.

“They’ll have to do better than silver. Doesn’t really affect me.”

“What does?” Dracula crossed to her, his hands coming down on both sides of her shoulder. She hissed as he compressed the wound closed.

She was well fed and so it was already sealing. Still, it wasn’t pleasant. The wound had been very high on her chest. She suspected her scapula had caused the bolt to deflect from the perfect killing strike of piercing clean through the main blood vessel to her heart. She could take a lot of damage and recover from much, but being shot in the heart was always one of the worst to come back from.

“Beheading. Burning. Starvation.” Agatha shrugged her good shoulder, eyeballing the fallen soldier. “Though you’d have to get me asleep, drown me in petrol or lock me somewhere with no access to a single living thing. I’m hell on prison guards- -do you think his clothes will fit me?”

Dracula glanced back at the fallen soldier and then down at Agatha, noting her paper thin gown. He would not usually protest at her wearing so little, but the soldier was wearing body armour that may protect her if she were distracted again.

“Let’s find out.” Dracula hurried over the soldier again, seizing the corpse in one hand and examining the clothing.

It was mere moments to remove the trousers, handing them back to Agatha so she could pull them on. The many pocketed armoured vest the man had worn was donated next. Agatha tore off her gown, replacing it with the vest. She zipped it up, rummaging through various pockets and hummed when she found a radio still functional despite Dracula force trauma to the original owner.

“How did you get up here?” She glanced down at Dracula, wincing when he seemed absorbed in pinching a bullet free from the muscle of his flank like a human might pop a pimple.

“Made friends with Ariel. I convinced her that I could help her get to her family.”

“And she _didn’t_ eat you?!”

“Well, the day is young, beloved.” Dracula mustered a sigh, pulling another bullet free with a wet _shlep_ of sound. “Though it was more, hmm, concussive than I imagined getting her inside. I do not imagine the structural integrity of this place will last much longer.”

“The multiple explosions had tipped me off.” Agatha nodded and ducked back when the doorway hissed open and another soldier appeared.

Dracula snatched his throat out of his neck as almost an afterthought, barely noticing the arterial spray that splattered him as the man fell dead and twitching at his feet.

“My point being, it may be best to make all haste toward the exit.”

“Wherever that may be.” Agatha bent, removing the sidearm from the soldier’s hip. She stole the spare clip of ammunition also, adding it to the collection in her new pockets and looked up at Dracula. “Heading up is likely our best bet. If we can find a lifeboat; great. A helicopter would be ideal.”

Dracula blinked, he had no idea what a helicopter was. There were still a great many gaps in his contemporary knowledge but if Agatha wanted one then a helicopter she would have…as soon as he had completed his task.

“Very well. You source the means of escape and I shall hold up my end of the bargain with Ariel. I shall meet you again on the surface.”

“What?” Agatha gripped his arm when he moved to head back the way he had come. “Where are you going?”

“To find the other prisoners, my dear. I gave my word.”

“To a super predator that will devour you in two bites as soon as she has the chance.” Agatha snapped.

“A female in my own image.” Dracula shrugged a shoulder with a smirk. “I gave my word that I would free her family and I shall do so.”

Agatha stared at him, momentarily entirely confused and then seethed out a breath. The idiot was entirely serious. He had given his word and so he would carry it out. No matter how likely it was that turning back rather than continuing to escape would end with his messy demise.

“You remember that her family won’t drown when this place fills with water?”

“Tis the principle of the thing.”

“Of course it is.” Agatha growled and yanked at him when he attempted to turn away again. “This way. A facility like this will be automated more than not. Capable of working on a skeleton crew. We’re going to want to find the control room. Once we have that, we can free them all at once.”

Dracula blinked, that had not occurred to him.

“You were going to rip off the door to each cell individually, weren’t you?” Agatha drawled.

“I come from an era of brute strength, my love.”

“Work smarter not harder, _darling_. Come on.” Agatha turned away, stepping over the dead soldiers and through the doorway at the end of the corridor.

She started into a light footed sprint. Travelling swiftly through the twists and turns of the oil rig’s narrow corridors. She hopped over each raised door hatch, caught a couple of guards by surprise and ventilated their skulls with a well placed shot. No point in wasting valuable energy tearing them apart when pointing and clicking would do.

It took her several moments to realised Dracula was falling behind.

She stopped, twisting to find him when he wasn’t at her shoulder like she expected.

In fact, he was all the way at the other end of the corridor, leaning heavily on one wall and breathing hard. He pulled yet another bullet from his flesh and dropped it in his wake. Ye gods, he was _sweating_ them out.

“Are you alright?” Agatha looked him up and down as he finally approached.

“I have been better.” Dracula winced, pulling another bullet free. It was then she noticed that part of his left ear was missing.

“You know that, typically, it’s better to get out of the way of the flying bits of metal.” Agatha tamped fiercely down on something that felt much like concern for him. She was also pointedly not thinking of how she had pinned him to a wall with her mouth.

Survive first, existential crisis later.

“There were other things on my mind.” Dracula growled. He pointed beyond her. “Is that a map?”

“It is indeed.” Agatha started towards the diagram nailed to the wall and scanned it hurriedly.

It was made of white plastic with a black schematic of the rig printed onto it. It was too new to have belonged to the original rig’s construction. The original rig had not also been hollowed out in order to accommodate multiple labs in place of drilling machinery, operating theatres, something that was called a ‘preservatory’ nor barracks for the soldiers that appeared to make up the bulk of the crew of this place.

“We’re here.” Agatha pointed to a bright red dot that helpfully annotated their location. She pointed to an orange colour coded block on the rig and then a smaller green block. “That’s the holding cells and that’s the control room.”

“With the barracks between us and them.” Dracula growled low, another bullet plinking to the ground.

Agatha looked sideways at him.

“Are you sure you’re up for this?”

“I’m not dead yet.”

“The day _is_ young _._ ” She reminded him.

“We don’t know what is in there. Ariel has been loose in the bowels of this place for a considerable amount of time. Long enough to divert most of the soldiers to dealing with her. The place could be empty.”

“Please don’t use the words ‘loose’ and ‘bowels’ in the same sentence again.” Agatha hummed. He had a point but she doubted their luck was that good. “They cannot be unaware that we are wandering free. They perhaps don’t have the manpower to deal with us presently, but what they will have will be strategically placed.”

“Fighting in corridors against a superior number is…less than ideal.” Dracula admitted. True, the narrowing of the corridors meant that they would have a more even chance of not being overwhelmed by greater numbers…but even they could succumb under a hail of bullets. 

“The control centre will have to be heavily guarded. In a structure like this, it is the brain of the place. The central keep of their castle.”

“So what would be least expected of us? To attack head on? There’s something to be said for the intimidation of complete madness.” Dracula offered a smirk.

Agatha opened her mouth to respond but whatever she had been about to say was swallowed by a muted thunder from far below them. Agatha staggered, crashing into Dracula’s bloodied chest when the _entire_ rig groaned as if a great beast dying around them. The floor began to pitch beneath them, the rig teetering, listing heavily to one side.

“I believe Ariel found one of the legs.” Agatha gritted into Dracula’s collar bone, levering herself upright again.

Alarms shrieked from everywhere. The lighting overhead flickered and went out. The coughing thrum of a backup generator shuddered to life, sickly orange emergency lighting throbbed sullenly. Brightening and dimming in time with the low whoop of the siren. An automated tannoy crackled, a holdover from the rig’s original designers, and ordered all workers to evacuate.

“Well, that was convenient.” Dracula held Agatha upright with a strong arm around her waist. “Any ideas?”

Agatha yelped when the rig buckled again. She had the strong sense that something had just fallen off or something very supportive and important had just given way. The floor pitched more violently to one side but in the _opposite_ direction and the rig shuddered. She swore she could feel it sinking by the second.

“Up.” Agatha shoved him along the corridor, emergency lighting blinking along the hallway floor, illuminating the way to the nearest exit. “Follow the lights. Go UP.”

Dracula did not need to be told twice. Pausing only to reach back and manacle her hand in his, he bounded forward, dragging her along the corridor in the path the emergency lighting showed.

They were lucky enough to have made their way out of the constructed parts that the Harkers had added on to the original rig and so they had the lighting to follow in this very current emergency. It meant going with the slope of the subsiding rig and Agatha rather hoped the gurgling sound she could hear beneath them wasn’t water _already_.

They had been quite high up in the rig, if it had already sunk that far…getting out might be harder than initially inspected.

“Come on.” Dracula jostled her by the arm when she lagged behind a bit and she jolted herself into action.

She wasn’t dead yet.

Dracula shouldered open a door, shielding her with his body and they found themselves in a huge stairwell. Dracula risked a glance downward and was heartened not to see any soldiers and guns pointed their way…but that was mostly because the stairs below them were rapidly disappearing beneath frigid water.

“Up we go!” Dracula started up the stairs without hesitation, pulling Agatha behind him.

They lunged up the stairs together. Dracula’s long legs bounding up three at a time, hauling Agatha with him as he went. His chest rasped horribly, he had a bullet somewhere in the bottom of one lung and he didn’t currently have the time to cough it out. It rattled around in his chest uncomfortably and he grumbled mentally about the rudeness of being shot.

Back in his day, if someone wanted to kill you then they had to damn well walk right up to you and do it. Fire irons were just… _unsporting_.

Both of them were breathing hard by the time they reached the top of the stairwell. They had outrun the water. For now.

Dracula shouldered open the door at the top, putting himself between Agatha and danger by force of habit now. He stalled when he found himself in an open plan area. It was expensively detailed like a lavish hotel lobby.

Of course, it looked a trifle worse for wear sloping off to one side and the furniture gradually slithering that way but Dracula supposed the effect was quite impressive when it was on top form.

“That way. Those stairs will lead up to the control deck.” Agatha leaned around him, pointing through glass doors on the far wall.

“As you say.” Dracula started across the lobby, head on a swivel for danger and reached the glass doors without incident. He grunted when he saw a biometric pad in place of any sort of handle.

“Damn, should have kept Bloxhom’s head.” Agatha muttered.

“We shall make do.” Dracula released her hand long enough to scoop up a gigantic potted plant and hurl it through the glass.

He smirked when it shattered rather pleasantly, leaving them a clear way through. They had to pick their way carefully over the shattered glass, bare feet were inconvenient in times like these. Dracula finally gave up on attempting any sort of grace, scooped Agatha up into his arms and bodily hurled her beyond the spray of glass shards.

He bounded after her, landing in a neat crouch at her side, marred only a little by _another_ bullet falling out of him and froze when he saw what she had seen.

“Uuuhhh… _what_ is that?”

“I think that would be a defensive measure.” Agatha’s voice was very high and her accent thicker with what was very palpable fear.

He realised it was the first time he had ever heard fear in her voice. She had never once feared him, nor the mob that had tried to lynch her aboard the _Demeter_ but _this_ she feared.

“I got that, wife, but what is it?” Dracula slowly straightened up from his crouch, never breaking eye contact with the beast that crouched the corridor before them.

It wasn’t overly large, the size of a good hunting hound and did not look entirely dissimilar to a dog. Though instead of a pelt of fur, its skin was a naked brown mottled with pinks. Its shoulders were wide, forelimbs powerful. The tail was too long and snake like to be a dog’s, huge ears perked upright from a wolf like skull, pointed like a jackal’s and rows upon rows of spines rose up from its back. From between its eyes, the full length of its body to the end of its slinking tail.

It narrowed burning crimson eyes at Dracula, powerful jaws parting to reveal fangs long enough to bite clean through his arm, and hissed in a guttural warning.

“It’s a Chupacabra.” Agatha murmured to him. “Think of it as a precursor to a vampire or concubi. Related to us in the same way that chimps are related to humans.”

“Humans are related to _what_?” Dracula almost turned to look at her but her elbow in his ribs changed his mind, keeping his focus on the beast.

“I really don’t have time to catch you up with over a century of light scientific reading, just consider it a long lost cousin and very unhappy to see us.” Agatha gritted. “If we break eye contact it will tear us apart.”

“It’s that strong?”

“Perhaps. This is a juvenile or a male. They’re quite small.”

Dracula’s brows rose as he stared at the beast. The Chupacabra that rattled its spines at him in a manner not at all comforting. It had to weigh over a hundred pounds, had far too many claws and teeth much bigger than his own. This was a _small_ one.

“Weaknesses?” Dracula attempted not to sound desperate.

“Is a short temper a weakness?”

“In a nun perhaps.” Dracula muttered and barely felt it when she elbowed him in the ribs again. He jerked his chin at the beast. “It’s got a chain round its neck. It must be used to guard this place.”

“I doubt they let it wander free. That thing’s more dangerous than we are.” Agatha did sound genuinely worried about the beast and Dracula had to agree that it did look rather hideous.

Still…

“It’s hurt.”

“Huh?”

“Its lame in the foreleg. Favouring it. I think it was hurt when the rig started to slide.” Dracula considered a moment and then gave a mental shrug. He had settled wolves, calmed them with his mind and become their leader.

It didn’t work with other animals. Not cats or rats or even bats like the legend said. Just wolves. Perhaps this long lost cousin of his was the reason why. It did look more wolf than a great many things. A naked wolf, but wolf nonetheless.

“Hey, pretty one, hey.” Dracula softened his voice, hunkering down and creeping towards the beast. “Hello there.”

The Chupacabra hopped back an uneven step, definitely favouring its paw, and lifted its black lips from its impressive teeth. It had five fangs in total, three on the upper jaw and two on the lower. All of them impressively sharp and likely came with the ability to drain its prey dry in seconds.

“We don’t mean any harm. We want to get you out of here. Would you like that?” Dracula stretched his mind out towards the creature, ignoring its hissing growls and edged closer still. “You won’t have to wear that chain anymore. Would you like that?” Dracula crafted and sent a simple image of the chain slipping from around the beast’s neck.

It stilled, growls stopping low in its throat.

“Dracula…” Agatha sounded less than enthused with this plan.

“It’s alright. Isn’t it?” Dracula continued to speak to the Chupacabra, edging closer still, almost within biting reach of those massive fangs. “We all just want to be free, don’t we?”

The Chupacabra’s nose wrinkled, the silent threat of another growl and Dracula froze, his hand outstretched. There was a long moment where he was convinced that the animal was going to attack him but he kept up the steady stream of images he used to communicate with canines. The repeated loop of the chain being removed from the animal’s neck, soldiers scattered dead throughout the rig, no threat and easy pickings for an animal with ribs that poked out in every direction.

The moment stretched, the rig shuddering around them and then the Chupacabra blinked. Its glowing red eyes closing and its nose tilting down, brushing against Dracula’s knuckles.

“Gooooood. Good boy.” Dracula shuffled forward on his toes, working his fingers along the creature’s long neck to the chain there.

It quivered beneath his hand on its snout, petting softly but not unaware of the silent growl rumbling in its throat. Still quite prepared to chew his head off should he so much as twitch in the wrong direction.

“It’s alright. It’s alright. Good lad. Let’s get this chain off now.” Dracula continued in that same low tone that he used for flighty horses and animals that needed calming. It took him a moment to realise that the chain was more than strong enough to withstand his strength but the lock itself was not.

With a low grunt and a twist, Dracula snapped the padlock off the chain and set it aside. He looped the chain from around the Chupacabra’s neck.

The beast danced to the side as the chain fell away, revealing reddened skin rubbed raw beneath where it had lain. The Chupacabra snorted in disdain at the chain, glanced at Dracula once and then bounded away.

Dracula twisted, watching the slinking spiny tail swing around the corner and away. The patter of clawed feet clacking over the tiled floor beyond.

“Well.” Agatha cleared her throat. “No one is more surprised than I that went well.”

“Ye of little faith.” Dracula pushed to his feet.

“Left that in my other habit.” Agatha let loose a whooshing breath. She glanced at Dracula uncertainly and nodded a bit shakily. “Well done.”

“It just wanted to be free.” He shrugged.

“Don’t we all.” Agatha looked in the direction the Chupacabra had disappeared off to for another moment and then turned back. “Best bet is still the control room.”

“Assuming that was the first line of defence, are you certain?”

“Yes, I’m certain. Nobody gets to kill you but me.” Agatha raised a brow at him.

“So _possessive_.” Dracula snickered and Agatha rolled her eyes but made no comment when he took her hand in his again and led her towards the stairs leading upward.

She might have protested at him leading her around like some sort of damsel but the fact was that she despised being shot, stabbed or beaten and he made a wonderful meat shield. He had already demonstrated that he could take a _lot_ of damage and seemed to recover from it every time through sheer stubbornness.

That and she would admit that his intimidation factor was a lot better than hers. When his eyes flashed silver and bloody, his lips peeling back over a crowd of fangs between his jaws and the sheer _size_ of him…well. He had been uncommonly tall, almost impossibly tall, amongst the people of his own century (centuries?) and still stood head and shoulders above most men. Like it or not, she was still a skelf of a woman and didn’t _quite_ have the same impact through sheer physicality.

Not that it typically bothered her. If someone was gawking at Dracula, it made it all the easier for her to flank them and rip their throat out.

She could already attest that he was a brilliant distraction. Hell, even _she_ had gotten shot because she had been paying more attention to him than she had her surroundings.

Agatha had the uncomfortable feeling that she wasn’t going to live such a thing down easily. She was more than aware of the heat of his hand on hers and remembered well the way he had plastered himself so willingly to her in the corridor outside the labs.

The drugs she’d been shot full of were a handy excuse but she knew she had been of her own mind when she had kissed him that time.

Which was concerning on multiple levels.

Agatha followed behind him, noting the decided lack of soldiers or other imprisoned monsters in their path with gratitude, and pondered that.

He was a monster, self professed and rather self satisfied about it too. He had killed hundreds, thousands, in his lifetime. Ripped people apart because he could, for the fun of it, for the _variety_. He was a predator through and through and more than intelligent enough to revel in his own cruelty. He was interested enough in science in order to be truly methodical and _terrible_ with his ‘experiments’ and capable of such inured depravity that he had said goodbye to his humanity so long ago…

…but then, so had she.

Agatha was far from innocent herself. She preyed on her own kind rather than humans (most of the time) but when it came down to it, a life was a life and she had no more right to take those of a criminal than she did an innocent. She did so because it soothed her conscience, if she must be terrible then she would be a horror on the side of the angels…but angels were no more human than demons were. She had given up on the pursuit of anything heavenly over a century ago.

There were no golden fields in the afterlife for her. If she still possessed an immortal soul, the best she could hope for was one of the lower levels of hell if there even _was_ anything afterlife shaped for those of them that were immortal.

She had made her peace with the fact that this life, such as it was, might well be the only existence that she had. She might only have this stretch upon the mortal coil before she was ended by some larger, smarter, crueller, monster, for she certainly wasn’t about to just age and die. Her life might stretch far over the horizon of the future or it might well be snuffed in the next ten minutes, she had no idea.

It was a reality that she had lived with since she had washed up on the shores of England, newly immortal and famished with a hunger that no food would sate.

She had been alone then.

She was not alone now.

Agatha glanced at the back of Dracula’s head. Noted the ragged mess that was one of his ears and remembered how he had barely acknowledged the wound. He was a creature of vanity, somewhat obsessed with his own image considering he would never look at himself in the mirror but he hadn’t even touched at the remaining half of his ear when she had mentioned it. He had tutted at the _massacre_ of his chest when it inconvenienced him, plucked out bullets when he could and pinched wounds shut but otherwise barely noticed.

In fact, the only thing he seemed to have really noticed, this entire time, was her.

He had been delighted to see her when she had awoken in the cell. Had let her slash and tear at him. Revelled in her ferocity and snappish mood. He had moved between her and danger at every opportunity and wrapped himself around her as if that alone would protect her.

She wasn’t even including the lunacy of signing himself over to the Harkers to begin with, just because they had her.

He was many things, Dracula, but she had never thought that he would risk himself so. Not least of all for her.

“Hmm.”

Agatha snapped back to the present at his voice. He had stopped, between one step in the next, the muscles over his back tensing with a ripple. He inhaled deeply and considered what was in front of him.

“What is it?” Her voice was low and she lifted the gun from the waistband of her stolen trousers.

“I believe that is the control room but…the door is open. Unguarded.” He glanced half back at her, giving her his profile.

“The alarms have been screaming to evacuate for a while now.” Agatha lifted a shoulder in a shrug.

“Are either of us that lucky?”

“Decades of experience point to the negative.” Agatha let loose a slow breath. “We need to go in there.”

“That we do.” Dracula grumbled, his hand tightening on hers in a squeeze before releasing her. “Stay behind me.”

“Way behind you.” Agatha agreed, bringing her gun up near to her chest, elbows tucked in, ready to fire.

He glanced back at her once more, arched a brow at her with the tiny weapon that he knew to be nothing more than an inconvenience to their kind, but was glad she had it.

Glad she had it and surprised that she hadn’t taken the opportunity to put a bullet in his back just for old times’ sake.

Dracula padded up the few remaining stairs between himself and what was so helpfully labelled the ‘Bridge’ of the oil rig. Obviously an original part of the structure though the biometric locks at the side of the door were not. Dracula noted they would have needed a palm print, a retina scan _and_ a keycard to gain entry had someone not so helpfully left the door ajar for them.

He was cautioned further when closer inspection revealed the door had not been opened by someone with the required identifiers. The lock had been forced, the door of heavy steel buckled out of its frame and into the dimly lit room beyond.

Dracula loomed in the doorway, twisting to see what he could see.

The room was half lit by shaded windows running the length of the wall he could see. The glass was polarised to keep the glare from interfering with the many screens he could see on multiple banks of work terminals set up in neat rows.

A coffee cup had been knocked over, chairs set askew as if people had left them in a hurry. An abandoned black jacket with an embellished ‘H’ on the lapel lay on the floor, one sleeve reaching toward the door.

Screens flashed, alarms trilled in the dim of the computer room, lights blinked on and off from seemingly everywhere and he supposed that was to alert the occupants of the control room that something was amiss with their evil lair.

Dracula inhaled deeply, trying to scent over the stench of his own congealing blood. He gained the rank spore of acrid sweat, adrenaline turned sour, fear and panic. He could hear no heartbeats on the other side of the door, sense no movement from within.

Still, he was _very_ cautious as he stepped forward into the room. His every sense was stretched taut like a tortured violin string.

He twisted sideways, sliding his bulk through the narrow opening of the ajar door. His crimson black eyes scanned back and forth, searching for movement and any occupants in the disarray of the control room.

He saw nothing, creeping fully into the room, cautious as a deer in a meadow. Incredibly aware that Agatha was directly behind him. One hand between his shoulder blades so he could infer her position from that small contact.

It all happened _very_ fast.

He caught only the barest hint of motion, a whirring hiss like servos and something smashed into his back like a battering ram.

Dracula coughed in surprise and pain as he was hurled the length of the room as easily as a doll might be tossed by a child. He was aware that Agatha’s hand had been imprinted onto his back by the blow cracking down over her hand to send him flying.

She let loose a ragged sound of pain, the shouting shock of a gunshot flashing in the dim room. The zipping sound of ricochet echoed followed by a yelp from Agatha. Glass shattering.

Sunlight.

Sunlight streamed in through the window as Agatha was hurled out of it and Dracula hissed, scrambling backwards from that treacherous golden light. His skin sizzling over his toes as he scuttled into the shadows to hide.

He stared at the window. Shocked.

No sign of Agatha. Simply blue sky beyond. Unrelenting sunlight beating down outside the shattered window pane and…no Agatha.

Dracula heard a low and pained sound. Something tortured and desperate and it took him a terribly long time to realise the sound was coming from _him_.

“That almost sounded like genuine emotion.”

Dracula’s head swung around, focussing on his enemy and something raging and terrible ignited in him when he found a target for his…rage was too small a word. Too human a notion for the terrible feeling that roused in him. It was molten flame, sulphurous and toxic.

Dracula had always believed in Hell, how could he not with an existence like his?

Though he had never thought that it could manifest within his own damned body.

“I’ll end you.”

Any trace of humanity had left his voice. His words warped and tortured around the jagged fangs that filled his mouth. His vision hazed white, bleaching at the edges, enough room in the world for only his target.

Armoured, he noted dispassionately. Armoured like the turret automatons that had peeled him apart in the lab. This armour was blood red and slick looking. It shone with a lustre that spoke of expense. Expense that had not been lavished on mere footsoldiers down in the depths of the dungeon labs.

The pilot was human. Old, wisened, ancient, female possibly. Difficult to tell under the parchment thin skin and crinkled features weathered by years. Liver spots mottled over a balding pate, hair wispy and ethereal around a shining skull like face.

But the eyes…the eyes _burned_.

Dracula felt the Hell spawning in his heart, bleeding from him in every direction and saw the precise same thing looking back at him in that ancient armoured human.

The human that had given Agatha to the sun. Sent her where he could not follow.

“Better than you have tried and failed, leech.” The human, lifted one hand with a buzz of motors and hydraulics. Every move enhanced by the armour plating every inch of them.

They rotated their helm, the opaque faceplate sliding over their toothless grin and maddened eyes. Her voice when she spoke was tinny and echoed all around him, slashing at his skin with every syllable.

“I burned them, just like I did her.”

Dracula felt the Hell inside him seethe. Felt it crawl up his throat, clawing at his fangs to be loosed. It burned out of his eyes and roasted the meat on his bones. It might have been the sunlight, he didn’t know when he had stepped into it but he didn’t care.

Agatha was gone.

Some part of him, the craven part that always sought to survive above all else, noted that there was no point in throwing away his own life now that she was nought but ashes on the wind but the larger part, the older, terrorised, howling part that had begun to…that _cared._

That part was in control now.

He didn’t feel the sun burn him as he stepped into the light. Didn’t care about the cooking of his own flesh. Inconsequential.

He could burn to dust for all he cared right now.

Just so long as he took his armoured enemy _with him_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dracula furthering his reputation as being a bit of a dramatic bitch. 
> 
> Really, considering the canon, I can only write him as someone who brings a good 98% of his misfortune upon himself. Nobody TRYING could actually cause him as much trouble as he does himself. 
> 
> Moron. 
> 
> Hot moron, but a moron, nonetheless.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNINGS FOR DRAMATIC ASS TIMING
> 
> THESE BITCHES BE PURE OF HEART BUT, BY GOD, THEY DUMB OF ASS
> 
> Yeah, so, rereading this for my edit, I realise how truly...*extra* Dracula and Agatha are, especially where the other is concerned. If you have no time for such things, I advise that you skip this story entirely and read something that is, I dunno, classy or some shit. 
> 
> If, however, you are here for two idiots falling in love and bickering whilst being shot at, BOY, this chapter's a good un. 
> 
> This chapter features a character that speaks using Sign. I've never written a character that speaks that language before, I am aware that the syntax and manner are not a drag and drop translation. I have written it for the purposes of narrative flow and tried to be respectful but if anyone knows how I can do better, please let me know.

**Chapter 11 – Revelations**

**_The Deck of the Rig…_ **

Agatha jolted when a…when a _howl_ woke her.

She sucked in a breath and stalled, her whole body curling in on itself in battered agony. She coughed, hoarse, trying to get her lungs to work and realised belatedly that she was still, incredibly, holding her gun.

“Fuck.” Agatha gasped, easing herself upright, clutching at her ribs.

Several broken. Marvellous. Her hand, the one that had rested upon Dracula’s back as he had snuck into the control room, was contorted to an odd angle.

All of the odd angles.

Agatha groaned, setting her gun down onto her lap and wincing as she took her mangled hand in her remaining operational one. She winced, hissed out a breath to fortify herself and snapped the joints back into place. She swore colourfully with each wrench of bone back into its correct alignment and was a panting, sweaty, mess by the time she was done.

Her hand shook, bruised and throbbing, but functional once more.

She flexed carefully, pushing with her good hand at her side, and gasped raggedly when her ribs were popped back into place.

Nausea washed over her, making her dizzy and heavy headed.

The pain receded as her sturdier than normal constitution went to work on her wounds. Knitting bone, tendons and flesh back together. It itched horribly but that was better than the breath stealing agony of her ribs pressed into her lung as it tried to inflate.

Agatha panted a moment more, squinting against the bright afternoon light that beat down on her from above. Any other time, she’d enjoy an afternoon like this, but that usually didn’t come after being hurled out of a window.

She flexed her back, wincing when a shard of plate glass fell out of her armoured vest and shattered onto the metal deck beneath her. She peered up…and up and up to see the smashed window high above that she had been so rudely tossed out of.

She jolted when a bellowing roar echoed above the alarms and chaos that came with a slowly sinking rig in the North sea.

“I should do something about that.” Agatha muttered to herself, lurching to her feet. She grimaced when one of her legs moved incorrectly and she had to thump that back into place as well.

Pain was relative. A signal to stop the body from further harming itself. The pain threshold of a concubi, for example, would be far greater than that of a human. The damage that she could shrug off would simply end a mortal, easily. That being said, being thrown out of fucking windows still _hurt_.

And she already knew that Dracula became a little…irrational when she was harmed.

“Okay,” Agatha patted at her head with her free hand, her gun heavy in the other, “head still attached. No extra corners. Not leaking brain fluid. Outstanding.”

The sound of something shattering high above her made Agatha winced.

“Well, he’s obviously still alive.”

Agatha looked drunkenly upward and staggered to one side when something came flying out of where she now knew the control room was.

It slammed to the deck where she had been standing a moment and Agatha looked blankly at the severed arm.

Not Dracula’s.

The metallic armour actually dented the deck it was so dense and Agatha raised an eyebrow when she saw the withered biological arm still inside the hydraulic powered armour. She was surprised to note that _very_ little blood leaked from the ragged stump and she grimaced at the stench of…decay, death, rot, rolled off the orphaned limb.

“Should…definitely do something about that.” Agatha pointed at the armour, talking primarily to herself but herself needed some convincing to make the climb back up to the control deck.

The deck beneath her bucked. Another alarm wailing to join the choir of others that screamed out into the sea wind. Agatha slithered sideways, the deck rolling beneath her feet and she realised that getting _off_ the damn death rig should happen sooner rather than later.

So best to kill whichever monster had been sealed into the tin can of red armour and drag Dracula off the damn rig before he forgot himself and sank to the bottom of the sea.

Again.

Agatha grumbled, shoving her gun into the back of her trouser waistband and hopped ten feet straight up, sinking the claws in her hands and feet into the metal plating of the oil rig.

This climb was going to be hell on her manicure.

With a ragged sigh, Agatha started towards the sound of carnage.

Trust him to have all the fun right after she had been hurled out a damn window.

**_The Control Deck…_ **

Dracula and his armoured foe traded blows like angered gods.

The deck bucked and shook beneath each slam of fist into body. Blood wheeled and splattered over the computer screens around them. Entire terminals of blinking lights and glowing buttons had been thrashed beneath the crush of two grappling monsters and neither cared about the destruction caused. Windows had been smashed out. Gold light spilling into the room, leaving pools of sunlight and shadow dappled amongst the blow glow of multiple screens.

Dracula, a gauntlet manacled around his throat, was slammed into the floor in one such patch of sunlight. He was aware that he should smell the stench of his own burning flesh, feel it sloughing from his bones as he cooked like a roast hog but it was nothing - _nothing-_ compared to the inferno raging within his chest.

It was as if his own heart had combusted in rage. He felt the pound of it through every inch of skin, through every muscle fibre, through every tough as steel bone. His rage scorched through his entire body, burning every thought from his head, immolating reason, good sense, survival instinct. All of it destroyed under the holocaust of what he _felt_ because Agatha was gone.

He was past words, beyond witty banter, so far gone that he didn’t think he’d ever wear the face of a gentleman again and he just…didn’t care.

It didn’t matter.

How could it matter.

How could anything matter in a world without Agatha, without his bride, in it.

He was screaming, he thought he was. His throat was raw as if he had gargled with broken glass. He was mostly certain that it had torn out his throat to howl his rage out so that it didn’t tear him apart. He had things to do before he burned.

Things like killing the armoured _thing_ crouched over him.

Every inch of him bled. The sealing scars over his chest reopened. New wounds split over muscle and planes of bone. Blood ran in runnels down over his flanks, his back, into his eyes from his hairline. He was crimson, rabid and unhinged.

Dracula’s hands closed around the forearm of the armoured gauntlet manacled about his throat.

Breathing seemed like such a petty concern in the circumstance, but it was the closest part he could reach. He had already ripped off the arm on the other side and once he incapacitated this side, it would be much easier to gut the beast inside like a fish.

This armour was stronger than the others. He knew that. It was a different mix of metals and something else he could not name. Lacquered red and newer in appearance than the others. He’d nearly popped his shoulders apart on the other suit of armour, peeling the faceplate away. It had taken everything he had.

Then again, he had been expecting to survive that last encounter.

The plates under his hands buckled. Crumpling like cardboard with a hiss of ruptured hydraulics. A tinny curse echoed above him, cutting through his screams and the armour wrenched away.

Another wound opened up on Dracula’s neck at the wrenching movement. Blood sheeting down over his chest as he sat up.

Didn’t matter.

He had it now.

He loomed to his feet, one leg lashing out and catching the armour in the chest. He sent it sprawling into a computer bank, crushing the terminals in a shower of sparks. He surged forward, earning a kick to his chest that cratered his ribs inward but he didn’t care about that either.

There were sounds, sweet, desperate sounds. Whimpers. Wordless breaths of terror echoing from within the faceless helm. The armour was trying to claw away from him. One arm flopping uselessly at the floor, trying to drag the armour away. The other missing. Oh, yes, he had pulled it off.

Like a child might pull the wings from flies.

Dracula sauntered through another ray of sunshine, watching it dispassionately shimmer over his crimson painted skin. He supposed the blood covered the burns but that hardly mattered.

Things to do. 

He bent, something popping wetly in his chest, but he ignored that too. You only cared about these things when there was something to live for, after all.

He snatched a flailing armoured boot in his hand and dragged the armoured beast back towards him. He loomed over it, reaching for the faceplate. He wanted to look into those maddened eyes as he ripped the life out of it. Look at the hell in them and let them know that his fire burned fiercer. His retribution more terrible than any mere god’s.

He’d let his wrath be the sight that ushered them out of this life.

The armour, flailing now, spun over, facing towards him and lunged.

Dracula was staggered by the blow. He stared down, surprised more than anything else. Pain was beneath his notice.

“Good grief. Right to the hilt.” He rasped, his voice no longer his own.

Something metallic bisected his chest now. It had missed his heart by a hair’s breadth. He could feel the thud of cardiac muscle against cool metal passing through his pleural cavity. He flicked a finger against the metal, it rang a dull sound, vibrating against his ribs. He raised an eyebrow and looked down at the armour.

“Was this a coat stand? Did you honestly think a bloody coat stand would save you?” Dracula’s laugh was oddly wet but that was another problem for the living. “You realise, I’m not even going to eat you? Just shred you into bits for the crows and carrion feeders.”

The armour lunged up, swinging wildly and thumped the coat stand in the hilt of its splayed foot. The metal punched deeper, the broader base punching a hole into Dracula’s chest that was nearly three inches wide.

Dracula snarled, annoyed more than anything else.

He howled when one of his legs buckled, sinking him to one knee.

Not out of pain, such petty concerns were beneath him, but _annoyance_. How dare his body betray him in such a way? He had things to do? Armour wearing miscreants to shuck from their suit like a prawn from its shell.

Dracula was aware of his strength seeping with his blood into the floor beneath him. He attempted to rise again, to pull the coat stand from his chest and use it to bludgeon the armoured beast to death but…his hands wouldn’t seem to grip anymore.

His fingers slithered slick and bloody over the stainless steel and Dracula growled in frustration. Kneeling in a pool of sunlight and blood, skewered on a spit, it was to be death by roasting then.

Rude.

Dracula lifted his head. He still had his arms, his teeth, he wasn’t done yet.

The armour loomed over him and it was a little inconvenient to know that he couldn’t actually lift his bloody arms. He bared his fangs, hissing as if sheer hatred would kill the thing.

He bellowed, in pain this time, when the armour gripped the coat stand and wrenched it free of his chest. He snarled, tottering forward on his knees but he wouldn’t fall. He tortured one foot beneath him, the muscles in his legs quivering as he tried to stand.

He could do it, he was certain he could.

The armour lifted the bloodied metal over its head, preparing to bring it down on top of Dracula’s.

Yes, he could get to his feet, just not fast enough.

Dracula gusted out a wet breath, it bubbled from his chest as well as his mouth and he bared his teeth in one last show of agonised defiance.

Well, if he was going to die, let it be this way. In the sunlight.

He supposed that was better than he’d had the first time around.

“Agatha.” Her name seemed to fall out of him. A benediction, request for salvation, a futile hope to see her in the next life perhaps. It hardly mattered now.

“You called?”

Dracula jerked his head up, hearing her _impossible_ voice and staring blankly. She stood at the armour’s side, her arm extended, gun barrel nosed into the open armpit of the armour where he had ripped off that arm.

The armour tried to twist but too slow.

The gunshots that echoed throughout the room thundered through his head and he could only stare as Agatha…casually saved his life.

She gripped the armour by the neck of its cuirass, holding it up by the breastplate even as she emptied the clip of the gun into the chink in the armour. Blood splattered back amongst muzzle flash, the stink of flesh cooking on sizzling gunmetal and she followed the brute down to the floor as every bullet tore through the soft innards of the pilot within the metal suit.

Agatha dropped the armour to the floor when her gun clicked on empty. She ejected the steaming clip, replacing it with a full one and bent to wrench the helmet open. She had seen the way of it in the labs. Just a catch and a twist really.

She grimaced when confronted with the desiccated husk of a person inside. The stink of death long postponed rose up off the still warm corpse and she planted her gun between its eyes without hesitation. She pulled the trigger, double tap, confirmed the kill.

Grey pink slop spattered the back of the helmet and Agatha grunted. She considered a moment and then shot again.

Just to be sure.

“Ag…Agatha.” Dracula coughed a wretched sound and she turned to see him.

Her eyebrows rose when she saw the _mess_ of him.

“What happened to you?!”

“You’re…alive?” Dracula weaved a little, evidently in need of falling on his face the soonest but he could only stare at her. Eyes wide, the crimson receding, leaving something very like human in its wake.

“Of course I’m alive. Takes more than some defenestration from an old aged pensioner to do me in.” Agatha dropped to one knee, setting her gun down on the floor since it was too hot to holster just now. She winced, a soft hiss of sympathy, when she saw the gaping holes…everywhere. “Oh, Dracula. What have you done?”

“But…the sun…”

“What about it?” Agatha caught his face in her hands when he tried to get closer to her and nearly ended up facedown on the floor.

“Burns…” He wheezed, a blood clot slopping out of his chest and Agatha realised she was going to have to do something about that.

Quickly.

“The sun doesn’t affect me. Nor you. Look at you. You’re sitting in it.”

Dracula’s chin dipped and he stared down at the pallor of his skin, streaked with drying blood, painted gold by the late afternoon light. He could only blink, uncomprehending in the face of impossible evidence.

“You and your _habits_.” Agatha scolded him lightly. “Didn’t you think it odd that none of your other progeny were affected by the sun? Nor crosses, nor holy water or repelled by their own reflection? Doesn’t it make much more sense that you’re just a wee bit touched in the head. Assumptions forming habits, habits forming neurosis, neurosis becoming ‘fact’?”

Dracula absorbed that for a moment, eyes shuttering against the glare of the sun. So sharp, the light. Such beauty. The heat, he had forgotten the warmth of it. That pure golden light that burned away all darkness. He was aware of the tears tracking from his eyes. Honest salt tears, not blood or coal like tar, but tears.

Agatha surprised him by gently swiping them off his bloodied cheeks.

“Feeling a little foolish.” He murmured, ducking his chin to press a kiss to her palm.

“Well, compared to me, unsurprising.” Agatha cocked her head and lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “Can we go now?”

“The other…inmates.” Dracula gave a ragged gasp.

“They’re already out, look.” Agatha took his chin, turning him towards one of the remaining functional computer terminals.

Dracula’s vision was hazy but even he could make out the blurry shapes of some not humanoid figures lurching about on the screens. The doors appeared to be open on all the cells and it seemed to be utter carnage in the rapidly flooding lower decks. Those soldiers that remained appeared to be meeting a swift and messy end at those they had held captive and it wasn’t like Dracula could drum up much sympathy for them.

“Must have been one of the automated alarms. I wouldn’t be surprised that the Harkers put monetary value of assets over that of their employees’ lives.” Agatha drawled, glancing at the corpse mouldering in the suit of armour not three feet away. “Should have killed them slower.”

“Your timing was impeccable.” Dracula wheezed, attempting to rise.

She was correct. The rig was sinking and his deal with Ariel was complete now that her kin were free from their various cells. They were free to leave.

He did hope she had a plan.

“Of course I have a plan.” Agatha drew his arm over her shoulders. “ _I’m_ not the one trying to bludgeon armoured soldiers to death with a coat rack sticking out of my sternum.”

“Clever thing.” Dracula coughed a wet sound, something loosening and slopping in his chest. Oh, that didn’t seem very good.

He rather regretted becoming so irrational about his perceived injury of her. Turned out that he did actually wish to carry on existing now that he knew she was fine. The holes in his personage seemed terribly undignified in the face of that.

“So _dramatic_.” Agatha huffed out and dragged him towards the door. “Come on, I saw a helicopter on my trip outside.”

It was a staggering and lopsided journey outside. Not only because, whilst Agatha was tall, he still towered over her and leaned drunkenly into her hold. The deck pitched beneath them, the rig dying around them, sinking closer and closer to the waves frothing around the subsiding structure. Bloodied bare feet slithered on slick decks and it was through sheer luck and determination that Agatha managed to half carry, half walk the great bulk of him out into the open air.

He hissed when the sun splashed down over his head and shoulders again. Though it was not a hiss of pain or fear. He tilted his face up toward the light, the smallest smile tugging at his lips under all that blood. He looked much like any apostle praying to their god.

Agatha flinched when a door clattered open to their left. She tensed when a…creature staggered out into the light, squinting up at the sun.

She might have guessed minotaur from the handlebar horns, the impressively statuesque height and the cloven hooves and tail…but the face was too human shaped. Something bovine in the wide shape of her nose but no self respecting minotaur would have an honest to god gold ring pierced through their nose cartilage like that. Not like an actual bull. The creature outstripped Agatha on every metric, made of slab over slab of muscle under velvet short white fur.

Another inmate staggered out of the hallway behind the bull-like woman and they all stared at one another for a moment. The other female seemed to be mostly human aside from her nose and mouth with appeared to have a very canine cast. Her ears slightly pointed and her eyes had a metallic flash that no human’s did but she looked much like a werewolf that had transformed only one minor part of her.

Her muzzle was stained with blood, as were the horns of her companion. Both of them soaked crimson near to the elbow.

The maybe werewolf chuffed a low canine sound, obviously incapable of human speech, lifted her clawed hands and signed to them all.

“Anyone know a way out of here?”

“There’s a helicopter. On the pad. Big enough for…” Agatha trailed off, glancing at the towering bovine creature. “Big enough.”

The maybe werewolf’s canine jaws gaped, showing pink stained teeth and a lolling tongue in a doggy grin. She gave a short bark and her hands moved elegantly and fluidly, obviously surprised and delighted that Agatha could understand her.

“You can pilot it?”

“Yes. Yes I can.” Agatha glanced at these two females and worried her lip for a moment. “Any other survivors?”

“Another canid.” The minotaur like creature spoke. She blinked down at the probably werewolf with long lashed liquid brown eyes. “Spiny one. Some fish things but they moved down rather than up.”

“Up sounds like a plan.” Agatha nodded sharply, aware of the blood seeping into her clothes from Dracula’s various wounds. “Let’s go.”

“You’re wearing their armour.” The minotaur spoke.

“Not willingly, believe me.” Agatha grunted, hefting Dracula higher over her shoulders. “You can mistrust me if you like, but good luck finding another way off this death trap. I do believe the staff have taken what lifeboats there may have been.”

The werewolf gave another low chuff and signed something to the bovine that Agatha couldn’t catch because of the angle.

The minotaur huffed a great steaming breath from within her huge chest.

“They are leeches.”

“Concubi. Actually.” Agatha pointed out. “And you’re not my type.”

The werewolf barked what was unmistakeably a laugh and then signed to Agatha.

“Helicopter up there?” She pointed.

“Yes.”

“I’m Latin,” the wolf pointed to herself, “this is N’Dama. Are you responsible for getting us out?”

“After a fashion.” Agatha turned when Latin passed her and started across the steeply sloping deck.

Latin yipped a happy sound and Agatha slogged after her. Dracula weighing her down. Another steaming sigh was the only warning she had at the approach of N’Dama and she yelped when Dracula was suddenly hoisted out of her grip.

“Peace, skinny one. He’s weighing you down.” N’Dama lifted Dracula’s bulk with one hand and slung him carelessly over her shoulder.

She seemed unmindful of the blood streaming from him and looked at Agatha expectantly.

Agatha wasn’t up to another knockdown drag out and the cow woman seemed to know it. Not only that but she was built like the proverbial bull and had to top seven feet at the tips of those curling horns of hers.

“Don’t drop him.” Agatha warned, surprised at the strength of the snarl in her voice and N’Dama dipped her horns in a nod. “Let’s go.”

Agatha waved the huge female in front of her, wanting her where she could see her and they started across the pitching deck. Water was lapping higher and higher up the sides of the rig and was beginning to wash across the main deck even on these upper levels.

Agatha made the mistake of glancing over at the water and stilled when she saw it red and churning. She recognised the huge bulk of Ariel moving through the water, her dorsal fins breaking the pink frothing surface. Now that she was listening, Agatha could hear Ariel’s deep voice crying out, answered by smaller, higher pitched sounds. Her family or children swimming around her.

Much smaller, a fraction of her size. More similar to human proportions but, when their heads broke the surface, looking with interest over at Agatha and her party, Agatha could see that they had jaws filled with shark like fangs. Their black eyes shining with hunger.

“Quickly!” Agatha herded N’Dama in front of her with flapping hands. “Let’s move quickly.”

She didn’t want to still be there when Ariel got over the happy reunion with her family and realised there were still some landlubber morsels on the menu.

N’Dama grunted, swishing her tail with a slap to Agatha’s shoulder but lengthened her stride and started across the metal decking with chiming hoofbeats on the metal. She forced Agatha to jog to keep up but followed in Latin’s wake. Clattering up the stairs after the lupine woman and slowed not at all but Dracula’s bulk over one shoulder.

The next problem, of course, made itself known when they reached the helipad.

N’Dama stopped so suddenly that Agatha smacked right into the solid muscle of her back and bounced clean off. She caught herself on the railing, _really_ wanting to avoid going overboard at this point, and looked around the bulk of N’Dama to see what was what.

The Chupacabra.

Of _course_ it was.

“Ugh.” Agatha groaned and tensed when she saw Latin, hunched down on all fours, approaching the beast. “Latin!”

Agatha darted forward, intending to intervene, but smacked bodily into N’Dama’s forearm when the huge female halted her with an absent movement. Agatha coughed out a wheezing sound. Good grief, what was the woman made of, but she was prevented from voicing further protests by N’Dama’s deep voice.

“Latin speaks dog.”

“Not a dog.” Agatha wheezed.

“Close enough.” N’Dama shrugged the shoulder Dracula was draped over like a bloodied shawl and he groaned a little.

“…’gatha?”

“I’m here. These are friends. We’re getting off the rig.” Agatha stepped closer, tilting her head so he could see her.

His hand fumbled, reaching for her and Agatha surprised herself by taking his grasping fingers in her own. He squeezed, a contact that was meant to be reassuring, then lost consciousness properly.

A yip drew Agatha’s attention back to the helipad and she saw that Latin was leaning over the Chupacabra, rubbing at his ribs with friendly hands, deftly staying out of the way of that spined tail. She looked up, signing awkwardly with one hand.

“Safe!”

“Let’s go.” Agatha urged N’Dama forward and gave the two canines a wide berth as she hurried to the helicopter.

She had never been so glad to see a huge ex-military aircraft in her _life_. The repurposed Chinook dominated the helipad that was not, strictly speaking, large enough for it. The chopper was as large as a bus with twin engines, one fore and another aft. It had been repainted a matt black to fit with the Harker aesthetic but Agatha hardly cared about that. She gripped the sliding door by the handle, twisting to see if luck was with her.

It was not.

With a grunt, she wrenched the door open, locked or no, and bounded up into the interior of the chopper. She swarmed through it, fore and aft, senses stretching back and forth and _daring_ some Harker pissant to come out and test her the mood she was in.

Empty.

Luckily for all concerned, really.

“It’s safe.” Agatha leaned out of the doorway and accepted Dracula from N’Dama when she hoisted him surprisingly gently inside the helicopter. “Can you un-sleeve the rotors? Take the blocks from the wheels?”

N’Dama grunted and Agatha took that as the affirmative when she turned away. A woman of few words but prodigious strength. Agatha decided that she quite liked her.

She dragged Dracula deeper into the belly of the helicopter. She left him on the floor. It was as safe as he was going to get as she didn’t want to further aggravate his injuries. She propped him there and turned back to find Latin pushing the Chupacabra in through the open door.

She winced when the huge canine looked at her with crimson eyes. Tensing when the beast approached her on claw clacking paws.

It sniffed, ears ticking this way and that, twitching back toward Latin when she jumped up into the Chinook as well. Its eyes landed on Dracula, ears perking forward, and started across the distance separating them.

Agatha coiled like a spring, prepared to see what the animal would do. The Chupacabra approached Dracula, licking once at his face. Agatha was fully prepared to hurl herself at the beast but it simply lowered itself into a sphynx position at Dracula’s side and gently lapped at the blood over his face. Cleaning him.

“Make sure he doesn’t bite.” Agatha spoke to Latin and then hurried forward to the controls of the helicopter.

A quick search resulted in no starter keys that she could see but that was hardly a surprise. It was a moment of ducking beneath the control panel, ripping some wiring and swearing heftily as she struggled to start the beast of a machine.

She crowed a laugh when the engine sputtered and then whined to life. A quick check out the window showed that N’Dama was clear of the rotors and Agatha could start them up. She hopped into the pilot’s seat. Slinging a headset on and flipped on the speakers so her voice boomed from the chopper out over the rig.

“N’Dama, get in here.”

The cow woman turned, plumed tail swishing and she rounded the chopper to hurl herself in through the side door. Agatha was quietly amazed that she didn’t clatter her horns or the breadth of her shoulders on the comparatively narrow door. She only winced a little when N’Dama dragged the door shut in her wake, heedless of the shattered lock, and wedged it firmly into place with truly incredible strength.

Well, that saved Agatha worrying about anyone falling out whilst she was flying she supposed.

“Alright, hold on!” Agatha called back into the belly of the craft, catching a glimpse of Latin and the Chupacabra hovering over Dracula but watching him rather than seeming to harm him in any way. N’Dama lowered her bulk to the floor on the opposite side of the chopper, glared a little at Dracula’s supine form and flicked one long ear in apparent disdain.

She made no move to harm him either.

Just as well, Agatha had no idea how she’d stop the giant woman if she took it into her head to be aggressive.

The Chinook’s engines thrummed with intent, Agatha’s fingers dancing over the controls as she went through pre-flight checks faster than was advisable for a creature that would still splatter if dropped from a great height. She gripped the controls, huffed out a breath, hoping she remembered how to do this right, and the Chinook… _took off_.

“Beautiful.” Agatha breathed mostly to herself, the Chinook lifting heftily into the sky.

Graceful it was not, but it more than made up for any lack of beauty by being stronger than most rotor powered vehicles. The Chinook was the military answer to the SkyCrane and capable of lifting incredible loads.

Like, say, a minotaur, werewolf and a trio of vampire creatures.

Agatha’s gaze lifted when sudden movement caught her eye.

Across the sloping deck of the rig, she saw a door fly open and no less than a dozen black clad Harker employees spill out onto the deck. They were screaming and waving, probably believing that one of their comrades was taking their only escape off the sinking rig.

Agatha hesitated a moment. She could see the fear in their faces, hear it over the scream of the engines in their desperate cries. Her hand wavered on the controls. None of them were soldiers. None of them wore armour nor carried weapons. It was not her typical habit to leave civilians to die.

She wavered a moment.

Though only for a moment. The decision taken from her hands by none other than Ariel and her _hungry_ family.

The mermaids swarmed up over the sides of the deck. Serpentine eel tails propelling them greedily forward, hand over hand. They slithered slick and darting quick over the deck. Launching themselves on the Harker employees with fang filled glee. Ariel hauled herself up over the half submersed railing of the rig deck and simply watched her children tear into the screaming humans.

Agatha watched when a gun appeared, taking a shot at one of the smaller mermaids, scoring a blurt of blood that splattered over the deck and Agatha’s sympathy evaporated.

Security personnel or not, they were still _Harkers_.

Glancing down at the controls, Agatha raised a brow when she saw the weapons systems had not been removed from this particular helicopter. She flipped through the switches with interest. In fact, it looked like some had been added on.

Gosh, that looked a lot like a missile basket hanging off to port, didn’t it?

Agatha, flipped the switches, activated the targeting system and aimed above the mermaids. She had no desire to harm them, even if they were squabbling over scraps, but nor did she wish anyone else to make it out of the rig alive.

Agatha watched as the missiles whooshed away from the hovering Chinook, spiralled through the air and smashed into the rig. They obliterated the structures above the deck. The mermaids scattering from the bright light and incredible noise. They dived into the bloodstained water, only their heads peeking up when the believed themselves a safe distance away.

Agatha unloaded everything the Chinook had on the rig. Blasted it from every angle. The missiles, the fifty calibre that hung starboard from the Chinook’s belly and finally dropped a barrel of something onto the smouldering remains that may have been napalm.

Only when the rig sank bubbling, still flaming, beneath the waves, did Agatha turned to glance into the back of the chopper again, checking her cargo.

She blinked when confronted with Latin and N’Dama standing very close to her.

N’Dama raised white eyebrows at Agatha, her dark lips quirking in a smirk and then she turned away to head back to where she sat. Latin’s jaws parted, sharp fangs on full display but her tongue lolling in that grin again. Her fingers danced as she spoke with them.

“Better than therapy, huh?”

“You know, I think you’re right.” Agatha grinned in return.

“Your mate, he’s hurt badly. Can we do anything?”

“Check if there any blood bags in the supplies. I doubt it, but it’s the only thing that helps him. If you can pour blood into his wounds, then he can use it to heal.” Agatha turned the Chinook with steady hands on the controls.

The first time she’d felt steady for _days_.

“Bleeding we can do.” Latin winked at Agatha and then spun away, chuffing a sound at N’Dama to get her attention.

Agatha risked another glance back at Dracula, so dreadfully still and bleeding from everywhere. She felt something very like worry claw at her but swept it aside.

Nothing she could do right now. Nothing but get them to safety.

With that in mind, Agatha turned the helicopter, tilting the nose down and putting all best speed to the rotors. The Chinook lunged forward, moving at a pleasing clip, and she lowered it as close to the waves below as she dared.

The last thing they needed was to be spotted on sodding radar, after all.

Orientating herself with a glance at the navigational readouts, someone had helpfully installed a SatNav system on the old bird, Agatha turned the helicopter for London.

Time to go home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This does not end at thirteen chapters btw. I'm still futzing with the ending to round it off in a more satisfactory manner. There's gonna be at least 15 chapters, I haven't changed it thought because I dunno how many. 
> 
> This is why we leave time for edits, kids. 
> 
> Please fic responsibly.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Crossover with Sherlock time!
> 
> I adore Molly Hooper and I firmly believe that Sherlock is the only one that can fluster her. So, to me, it is not far fetched that she would get along a lot better with the dead or undead than she would civilians.

**Chapter 12 – Irregular Friends**

**_St Barts Teaching Hospital, London…_ **

“Right, Mister…Ba-luar? Let’s have a look and see what happened to you then.” Doctor Molly Hooper consulted the chart that had come in with her latest body bag and then set it aside.

She snapped on her latex gloves and reached for the zipper of the body bag. It was a fairly quiet night in the morgue. Only two cadavers had been brought in and neither of them had apparently died under suspicious circumstances. Investigative autopsies only, just part of the general inquest that followed a body turning up in the greater London area.

Molly’s brows lowered in a frown when she realised that _somebody_ had obviously mislabelled something because there was no way the _mess_ in front of her that had once been a man had died of natural causes.

“Oh…kay?” Molly plucked the chart up from the instrument table and consulted it once more. “Mister Balaur, Caucasoid male, late forties, black hair, brown eyes…probable cause of death…’suspected clotting disorder’?!” Molly frowned at the scrawled notes on the chart and then looked back at the body on the slab, half out of the body bag.

She blinked.

Well, yes, she supposed the cause of death might well have had something to do with a clotting disorder if the definition of same had changed since she had last checked. Usually, in blood clotting disorders, there tended to be at least _some_ blood left inside the body and most of Mister Balaur’s appeared to be on the outside.

Molly worried her lower lip between her teeth, stepping back to lean against the other occupied slab and the second body bag there. She drummed her fingers on the clipboard of the chart and weighed her options.

It wasn’t _often_ that bodies were mislabelled. They were usually pretty strict about that sort of thing in a teaching hospital. Though it was not out of the realm of possibility of course. Human error occurred, especially considering the sheer volume of cadavers that a teaching hospital dealt with. There were bound to be screw ups simply due to the law of large numbers.

However… _however_.

That did not explain why the body bag behind her shifted and sat up.

“Sherlock, I _swear_ \- -!” Molly rounded, working herself up into righteous indignation that petered out when a hand wheedled out of the top of the body bag zipper and forced it down.

A flushed female face revealed itself, working her arm and shoulder through the opening in the body bag and gusted out a huff of stale air.

“Who’s Sherlock?”

“Agatha!” Molly’s face split into a grin and she lunged up into the arms of the older woman.

Agatha chuckled, catching her young friend in a tight but gentle embrace. She dipped her chin, pressing a kiss to Molly’s hair and leaned back to see her friend in better light.

“You look well.”

“You look exactly the same. Infuriating, that is.” Molly smirked in a lopsided manner, studying Agatha. “You alright?”

“I’ve had better weeks.” Agatha released Molly, letting her rock down onto the flats of her feet. She worked her other arm out of the body bag and scrunched the crinkling material down to her hips, unzipping the rest so she could work her legs free. “Sorry for the unannounced visit, but I needed a place to disappear.”

“Not a problem. You know that.” Molly’s eyes tracked over Agatha as she swung her legs over the side of the slab and dropped to the floor.

The taller woman was dressed in the dark overalls of a coroner. A name badge proclaimed her name to be ‘Jamie’, her long hair was spooled back into a knot under her cap with the Bart’s logo on it and -if you were paying attention- you might well notice that she did not appear to be wearing much under the coveralls.

“Oh, Agatha, what did you do with Jamie?” Molly remembered where she had seen those credentials before. She _liked_ Jamie. He was tall and lanky and shy but he was always lovely to her and told her funny puns when he dropped off a body.

“He’s fine!” Agatha hurried to defend herself. “Met him, had a word and…convinced him to go home and spend some lovely time with his boyfriend. I imagine they’re both having a great time.”

“You sent him home naked?” Molly winced.

“I did _not_ …he was wearing things under his work clothes. I did, however, steal his shoes. You might want to give them back to him.” Agatha looked down at the chequered loafer type shoes she was wearing. She summoned another bright smile for Molly when Molly just… _frowned_ at her.

“Oh, shall I? Just casually drop it into conversation that my sex pest immortal friend happened to nick his shoes because she’s blown something else up this week to fake her death and needed to be laundered through the morgue like most criminals clean their dirty money?”

“I’m not a sex pest.” Agatha managed after a moment. The rest of it she really couldn’t deny. “Besides, I don’t need any paperwork forged this time, just some blood donations and…the hose.”

“He’s with you?” Molly jerked her thumb towards the very dead Mister Baluar. Then again, considering Agatha, dead wasn’t always what it seemed.

“Mm, sort of.” Agatha rubbed at one arm and admitted as if it pained her. “I’m kind of…attached to him right now.”

Agatha _had_ attempted to dump Dracula at the first opportunity.

She had ditched the Chinook on the outskirts of the city in an industrial estate. Latin, N’Dama and the Chupacabra had disappeared off into the dark of the night with thanks and a wave, insisting they would pay her back in the future.

Agatha had worked quickly to dismantle the weapons systems of the Chinook in case someone less savoury happened upon an ex military vehicle and decided to strip it for parts. She had allowed Dracula the courtesy of dragging his insensate self out of the helicopter before she’d found a way to set fire to it. Then called the fire brigade from the mobile phone of a security guard she had pounced on when he’d happened upon her with a gallon of aviation fuel and some matches.

However, when it had come to leaving Dracula under a bin in an alleyway to sleep off his wounds as she had originally intended…she had been unable to walk away.

Agatha, personally, blamed the Harkers for dosing her with all sorts of frisky chemicals that still weren’t entirely out of her system. The adrenaline, the fighting, the stress response to escaping the Harkers, the beating they had both taken to get out, all of that had helped to tamp down on her more…insistent urges. Hadn’t extinguished them though.

There was still a very large and ferocious part of her hindbrain that _insisted_ that Dracula was hers. Hers to keep. Hers to look after.

So, in the interest of not bloody dithering about in the shadow of a flaming helicopter, Agatha had scooped him up and made her way to Bart’s as quick as she could.

She hadn’t wanted to go to any of the BPRD’s safehouses as she had no idea how far the Harkers had infiltrated the organisation. She had no proof that they had, of course, but the Harkers had found her in Syria somehow. She would not have put it past them to have infiltrated the BPRD, bought, tortured or blackmailed one of their staff into giving up Agatha’s whereabouts.

She was a relatively new addition to the BPRD team and consulted with their UK offices but the only ones she really trusted were Hellboy, Broom, Abe and Elisa. Until she saw any of their faces, she wasn’t trusting the BPRD as far as she could throw them.

Which was why she needed to call in a favour from one of her own personal friends. One who was not involved with the supernatural community at large. Much.

“Not like you.” Molly noted, turning back to look at the other body.

Now that Molly was searching for it, she saw the faintest movement in his chest. His vitals would be non-existent for a human but loaded with as much damage as he had been. Molly didn’t find it surprising that he had slipped into a healing sleep and would remain as such until his body reconstituted. She turned back to Agatha.

“He looks like he’s been shot.”

“Amongst other things.” Agatha skirted Molly to stand over Dracula. “We were…kidnapped. Held together. We had to fight our way out. He had been in hibernation for over a century. He doesn’t know enough about the modern world to keep himself out the way of bullets.”

“He’s like you?” Molly moved closer.

She frowned down at the _scale_ of the damage he had taken. He was quite evidently in a bad way. Riddled with wounds all up and down his torso, his arms, his neck, his head. At least seventy five percent of his body was marred with various punctures, bruises and lacerations. A human would have been reduced to the consistency of spaghetti but Molly had helped Agatha put her chest back together after she’d had to jump on top of a grenade and the elder woman didn’t have even a scar from that escapade.

So…he was probably going to be fine. Despite looking like a raw hamburger that someone had run over with a rake and meat tenderiser.

“Yes. One of mine. One of my kind, I mean.” Agatha cleared her throat.

“What’s his name?” Molly moved around the opposite side of the slab and watched her friend from under hooded lashes.

Agatha Van Helsing had been in Molly’s life for…a long time. The woman had insisted that she was an old family friend when Molly and her siblings had been children and had come and gone as she had pleased throughout their upbringing. She had brought gifts, spoiled them terribly and disappeared again. Sometimes for years on end.

She always looked exactly the same when she came back. Never aged. Never changed.

Molly had figured out that Agatha wasn’t human by the time she was twelve. There are only so many non-human characteristics that can be hidden from a biology nut, even if they’re prepubescent. It wasn’t until she had been older, until her father had been dying, that Agatha had admitted to anything.

Until Molly had confronted her and begged her to use whatever magic it was that kept her alive and unchanging to cure her father’s cancer.

Agatha, of course, could not. All she had been able to do was ease his passing. Jonathan Hooper had passed away blissed out of his mind and pain free for the first time in months. Agatha’s powers had let him have that. Let him slip away in peace.

Molly had known Agatha for years. Her whole life. She probably knew Agatha better than most…that being said, she had never seen Agatha form an attachment to one of her own species before.

Whenever Agatha came to Molly in need of help, there was usually a tale of one of her rivals trying to steal territory and having to have a rather fatal stop put to that. Sometimes there was talk of vampires and how they kept trying to catch her and woo her with some truly bizarre mating behaviours. That usually ended with Agatha looking very well fed and them never being heard from again.

In fact, up until right this moment, Molly would have put money on Agatha being interested only in females judging by the way she had obliterated every other male in her life.

She did not miss, however, the way Agatha’s fingers whispered over the hand of the unconscious male on the table. She looked conflicted but not repelled.

“Agatha,” Molly reminded her friend that she had spoken, “what’s his real name?”

“He was born Vladimir Teppes.” Agatha shook herself. “Centuries ago. I knew him as Dracula. Before I was turned.”

“Shut. Up.” Molly looked up from shrugging her white lab coat from her shoulders. “This is Count Dracula?!”

“One and the same.” Agatha’s mouth twisted.

“Thought you’d blown him up.” Molly blinked.

“Me too. Turns out that I missed.” Agatha stared down at Dracula for a moment. “He survived in a crate of his home soil at the bottom of the sea. Waded ashore a week or so ago. Captured by the same people that caught me. They wanted…a breeding pair.”

“Ugh. Gross.” Molly whipped off her coat in annoyance. Honestly, mad scientists gave the rest of them a bad name. “You alright?”

“Of course. I’ve survived him before.”

“Yeah, but…made you something else. Didn’t it?”

“I was always going to be this when I died.” Agatha shrugged a shoulder. “I know that now at least.”

“Wow. Count Dracula.” Molly looked the length and breadth of him spread out on the slab. “I thought he’d be smaller. People were shorter a hundred years ago.”

Agatha waved at her own statuesque height expansively.

“Yeah, and you were the equivalent of an NBA player back then, weren’t you?” Molly shot back. “He must be taller than Sherlock.”

“Who _is_ Sherlock?” Agatha folded her arms over her chest. “You’ve mentioned him twice now.”

“Consulting Detective. Works with me sometimes. Well, I work with him. He’s the one I asked you to…help me with. Few years ago.”

“The tall pasty one with the cheekbones?” Agatha remembered the man vaguely. Males tended to be replaceable to her.

“That’s him.” Molly nodded, putting on her protective goggles and apron preparing to get to work on Dracula. “It all worked out in the end. He’s back now.”

Agatha shifted, watching Molly as she bent over Dracula and peeled up a flap of skin that wasn’t healing properly. The pathologist grimaced, finding a sliver of metal shrapnel beneath the wound and removed it. She patted the flap back down carefully and hummed when it began to knit back together before her very eyes.

She never got tired of that.

“You’re over him.” Agatha narrowed her eyes. “He hasn’t got the same sway over you anymore.”

Molly glanced up at Agatha, humming in her throat. Her gaze tilted away and she mulled that over a moment.

“No. Not really.” Molly motioned for Agatha to help her when she tried to shift Dracula and his bulk stubbornly refused to be moved. “Just kind of…accepted that he was always going to be part of my life. Good grief, what have you been feeding him?”

“Neighbours, mostly.” Agatha helped twist Dracula this way and that to get the bodybag out from under him.

He was clad only in the scrub like trousers that he had escaped the Harker rig in. Agatha had elected simply to cover him with the body bag rather than worry about his non-existent modesty when she was trying to have him stapled back together. The trousers were ruined, pattered with small singes, bullet holes and sopping with dried blood. They’d be best tidied immediately into the nearest incinerator.

“God, he’s a right mess.” Molly grimaced when she saw the horrific exit wound on his back as Agatha had his torso tilted towards her. “What the hell was this?”

“Coat stand.” Agatha carefully set Dracula on his back when Molly motioned for her to do so. “Run through by a coat stand wielded by a robotic armoured…ghoul. Possibly.”

“A ghoul?” Molly glanced up at Agatha.

“Looked like one. Certainly smelled like one.” Agatha shrugged a shoulder. “He’ll heal if we clean the shrapnel out and pour some blood on him. His body can use it to rebuild the damage.”

“Been a _very_ interesting week by the sound of things.” Molly muttered and considered her options. She looked up at Agatha. “How fresh does the blood have to be?”

“Uh…quite to very?”

“Pile up on the M5 early hours of this morning.” Molly noted and glanced over at the many drawers lining one wall in the refrigerated unit. “If I were the less squeamish sort, I might exsanguinate some of the fresher bodies…because I don’t think a couple of bags being ‘misplaced’ from the stores is going to cut it.”

Mistakes happened at Bart’s, after all. Things were mislabelled and went missing. Particularly when Agatha turned up and Molly had to stitch her back together. Still, she loathed to take donated blood from the hospital’s stores. Bart’s didn’t have an Accident & Emergency, but they did still have patients and those patients often needed donated blood. Molly didn’t want anything to turn up missing that might save another life.

“Alright. I can do that. Where are the buckets?”

“Storage closet C.” Molly pointed her friend in the right direction and Agatha nodded, heading off to find some buckets and corpses to drain into them.

Molly watched her go and then turned to look down at Dracula. She considered a moment more and then nodded decisively.

“Going to need the metal detector.”

Well, at least her night had become _interesting_.

A little bit of light grave robbery and putting an immortal legend back together was always more interesting than mere paperwork.

Besides, Agatha always made the best cups of tea.

**_Later…_ **

Dracula awoke slowly.

A growl rumbled in the back of his throat and he grimaced when the vibration made it feel like he was going to shake himself apart. He winced, a sound of pain escaping him before he could stop it and he forced an eye open when an unfamiliar voice spoke to him.

“Morning, sleepy head.”

Dracula levered one eye open and then forced the other to cooperate too. He stared at the miniscule female with elfin features standing over him. She smiled down at him, close lipped and Dracula blinked.

“Whoa! Cheeky.” The woman danced back, darting out of reach when Dracula lunged for her, claws extended.

She watched him topple face first onto the floor and huffed out an annoyed breath.

“Honestly!” She muttered to herself and then stooped, looping her arms under his and hoisting him upright again with surprising strength. “ _Do_ try not to be an arse to the woman that’s just spent most of her night cleaning your wounds and putting you back together.”

“Uh…” Dracula was shoved at a metallic table that reminded him uncomfortably of the one in the Harker’s lab with the head and limb restraints.

He edged away from it, glaring at the tiny woman that did not seem to fear him in the slightest and looked blearily around the space he was in.

Over bright lights, tiled floor, stainless steel everywhere, trays with tools, lab equipment and an entire wall of refrigerated drawers. Dracula hissed when he realised he was in a laboratory very similar to the one the Harkers had peeled him apart in and he had very little interest in history repeating itself.

“Agatha.” He growled.

“Gone to get some food. She’s starving.” The tiny woman in medical scrubs folded her arms over her chest, looking very unimpressed. Still.

Well, he supposed he deserved that. Hardly looked his best and he’d tried to take her head off.

A quick self check revealed she might well be telling the truth. He was completely naked, something that thankfully didn’t seem to bother either of them, but his body seemed a whole lot more…well, whole, than it had the last time he had looked. The biggest holes in his torso were sealed even if they still looked raw and pink, the minor wounds had faded scar pale already and only the very largest ones were being held shut with papery stitches still.

He also smelled strongly of…disinfectant? Surgical soap? It had an alcohol base note that made him think he had been scrubbed down. The copper smell beneath the soap was blood. He had obviously been treated the same way Agatha had cured his vivisection wounds.

Seemed he could come back with that same trick more than once.

Good to know.

“Sorry.” Dracula’s voice rattled out of the tortured mess of his throat. “I’m Dracula. You are…?”

“Doctor Hooper. Molly Hooper.” The little doctor smiled but didn’t come any closer to him. Not afraid of him but definitely smart enough to stay out of arm’s reach.

Dracula frowned. That name was familiar. Why was it…?

“Thought you dressed like a man?”

Molly’s brows rose and she blinked at him. Twice. Her lips twitched and then she looked down to hide a smile.

“Ah, no. Cross dressing is in the family history. One of my ancestors pretended to be a man in order to get through medical school. Not really a requirement these days.”

“You must be thrilled.” Dracula wanted to sit down but he powerfully did not want to get back onto the metal slab. Bad memories.

“Come here, you big lummox. Sit down before you fall down.” Molly turned away abruptly, marching across the lab to find a wheeled chair and steering it back towards him.

Dracula let it crash into his knees rather than attempt the indignity of catching it in his uncoordinated state. He spun the chair, grasping at it with clumsy hands, and lowered himself to sit. Delicately. He felt as if the paper stitches were the only thing holding him together. A blanket was thrust at him and when he just plucked at the material, Molly leaned over him and set about bundling him into it.

“Thank you.” Dracula might have summoned more sass but he ached all over and didn’t think he had the energy.

He didn’t even make another lunge for her throat when she was so within reach. Too tired to be hungry. Madness.

“You’re welcome. Not the first time I’ve glued an errant immortal back together. How do you feel?”

“I have been better.” Dracula managed a weary smile. His voice at least was returning to him the longer he used it. “Where is Agatha?”

“Told you. Gone to get food.” Molly leaned back against another slab, frowning. “Did they hurt her? Whoever took you both?”

“No.” Dracula answered at length. “She was drugged and then injured but I believe she escaped before they could carry out any of their experiments. One does not often survive after underestimating Agatha.”

“True.” Molly cocked her head, her cinnamon brown tail of hair swinging over one shoulder. She considered him with dark eyes for an unblinking moment. “She said they wanted a breeding pair. Her captors. Agatha’s never expressed a serious interest in any male as long as I’ve known her -barring the odd light lunch- should I be castrating you about now?”

Dracula blinked at the tiny Doctor, taking a moment to piece her meaning together. When he did, his brows rose, wondering if she were serious. She had to be a little over five feet and weight barely a hundred pounds soaking wet. Even in his weakened state, Dracula was fairly confident he could keep her at arm’s length. His arm’s length.

Molly hefted a power saw typically used for severing limbs in difficult autopsies and buzzed the blades for a second.

“No!” Dracula held up one hand, realising a response was very much required. “Nope. No need for severings of…any sort. I admit my intentions are far from…innocent when it comes to Agatha but I am rather intent on it being a joint decision.”

Dracula wondered if he was actually going to have to try and make a run for it. Molly just watched him over the whirring blades of the electric saw, her expression unreadable.

Then she switched it off with a whine from the tiny motor and dropped it back onto the slab, a grin brightening her face.

“Glad to hear it. Did she really blow you up on the _Demeter_?”

“Uh…yes.” Dracula coped with the sudden change of topic and demeanour as best he could. Agatha always had kept strange company though.

Himself included.

“Mostly successfully.” Dracula continued. “Had a diver not come across me and literally stuck their fingers between my fangs, I might never have awoken at all.”

“How old are you?”

“ _Old_.” Dracula levelled a glare at her. Rude.

“One hundred? Two hundred? What?”

“I was born in the year fourteen thirty-one.” Dracula admitted when he realised he was at her mercy and she wasn’t going to let it go.

“Huh.” Molly folded her arms over her chest. “Did you know Elizabeth Bathory?”

Dracula searched through his memories for a face to match such a name and drew a blank.

“Should I?”

“She was rumoured to be a vampire as well. Apparently bathed in the blood of virgins to retain her youth. She was Hungarian. Her crimes spanned from fifteen-ninety to sixteen-ten.”

“No. Never met her. I believed myself to be the only one of my kind until…well, until Agatha. I had attempted to replicate the process that had made me…unique amongst the undead, to propagate my species, but I was never successful. They never…turned out right.”

“Hmm. They mustn’t have had the gene.” Molly mulled it over. “It’s become a bit more common now because the population of the planet has exploded but it’s still recessive. Only people with a certain gene will turn into a supernatural when they die. Like Agatha did. Being undead isn’t really all that uncommon, but retaining your memories and faculties _is_. Only people with the gene can become immortal like Agatha and you.”

“Oh.” Dracula blinked. He had no bloody idea what a gene was and was wondering how best to convince Molly to give him just a sip of her blood so he might absorb some of the information from her but the thought that Agatha might be rather cross with him gave him pause.

That and the circular saw was still right at Molly’s elbow.

“You sort of missed modern science, didn’t you? If you’ve been asleep for the last hundred odd years then it would have just been getting started in Europe.” Molly grinned suddenly. “You’re going to _love_ learning about it all.”

“I’m certain I shall.” Dracula managed a smile and perked up when the doors to the lab swung open, admitting Agatha.

“She means by reading, you glutton.” Agatha crossed quickly to him, towering over him in his little wheely chair and considered him for long moments. She huffed out a breath. “Still in one piece I see.”

“Thanks to Doctor Molly.” Dracula nodded to his host. “She very kindly put me back together.”

“I’m aware.” Agatha gritted, seemingly quite cross with him.

Well, what else was new?

“Here, California rolls.” Agatha handed the plastic bag she was carrying over to Molly. It had a red fish emblazoned on the side.

“With chicken in panko?”

“Obviously.” Agatha smirked and Molly grinned.

“Thanks!”

“My life is worth…chicken in panko?” Dracula looked up at Agatha a little blearily.

“Your life depends on my good graces. Molly put you back together because I asked nicely. The sushi is just because I want to make sure she eats a proper meal.” Agatha glared at him. She exhaled forcefully again. Seemingly rationing whatever patience she could still lay claim to. “Can you walk?”

Dracula considered the question, wincing. He lifted a shoulder and then nodded.

“I believe so. Slowly.”

“You just have to get as far as a cab. We’ll have to find a hotel.”

“We could call Frank.” Dracula suggested.

“Who the hell is Frank?”

“My lawyer. He represents me. Well, both of us, actually.”

“Both…of us?” Agatha arched a brow.

“The paperwork says that you are the Countess Dracula.” Dracula rubbed at a sore spot on his cheek, his eyes darting away from hers. He was in no position to defend himself from her wrath, after all.

“You’re married to Count Dracula?” Molly leaned over from her side of the slab, raising a brow at Agatha.

“I most certainly am not.” Agatha glared at Molly and then down at Dracula. “This one forged the documents.”

“Actually, no I didn’t. They were…legitimate. Admittedly, I did eat the witnesses, but we were married. After a fashion. I think I devoured the judge that presided as well.”

“You couldn’t step on hallowed ground because you’re _neurotic_. There were no such thing as non-religious ceremonies over a century ago.”

“My dear, with enough money, anything can be made to happen. Besides, the church has a long standing tradition of being bought off. It wasn’t even difficult.”

Agatha inhaled deeply, her mind turning over the fact that _one of her own_ would have been bribed to marry her to the monster that had killed her. The man sitting helpless before her. Agatha seethed for a moment but…she was hardly surprised.

The men of the church had always been so…easily swayed. Part of the flock rather than the shepherds they should have been.

Agatha might have summoned more vitriol but it turned out that trauma fatigue was a real thing. The scales had long since been ripped from her eyes with regards to the church.

“Of course it wasn’t.” Agatha rubbed at her forehead.

“I know a good divorce lawyer.” Molly advised, smirking at Dracula when he glared at her. “Take him for everything he’s got.”

“I don’t want his blood money.” Agatha sighed and then relented. “Have enough of my own, don’t I? Besides, I could just get the marriage annulled.”

“Well, yeah, but why waste the opportunity?” Molly waved at Dracula and lifted her brows when Agatha turned to bare her teeth at her. “I’ve got _eyes,_ Agatha! From a purely physiological perspective…wowzers.”

Agatha inhaled deeply and looked at the ceiling.

“Doctor Molly, you are my second favourite.” Dracula summoned all the charm he was capable of, smiling at the pathologist.

“I’ll take that in the spirit it was intended.” Molly grinned at him and then turned to Agatha. “Do you have money for a hotel?”

“It can be arranged.” Agatha dragged her attention away from the ceiling and levelled another glare at Dracula just for good measure.

“Yes, but you’re dead on your feet. No offense.” Molly glanced at Dracula and his lips quirked in a smile. “Options are these; stay here, stay at mine, let me pay for a hotel or call this Frank bloke.”

“Not the lawyer.” Agatha dismissed it. “They smell awful and I have no reason to trust a man I’ve never met, let alone one the Harkers will recognise on sight.”

“True.” Dracula let his protest die before he even voiced it. Agatha did have a point.

Assuming that the Harkers had been completely destroyed along with their seafaring prison laboratory would be foolishness. They were a global organisation judging by the way they had operated across multiple countries with seeming ease. The Harkers were likely still out there, fully aware that their lab had been destroyed and were more than interested in getting their ‘assets’ back in the form of Agatha and Dracula.

As much as he wished to rend asunder anyone that tried to take her from him, Dracula wasn’t precisely up to standing right now, never mind physically defending his wife.

Agatha rubbed at her eyes and considered a moment. She heaved a sigh. Turning to Molly, she made her decision.

“If you don’t mind, Molly. I would like to take you up on your offer of visiting your home.”

“Of course.” Molly grinned and then looked pointedly at Dracula. “Don’t eat my cat.”

Dracula blinked, caught off guard. He had never eaten a cat in his life and certainly wasn’t about to start now.

“Doctor, I don’t think myself capable of even catching such a beast.”

“Right, sorted. Let’s get you some clothes then.” Molly clapped her hands as if to spur herself into motion and disappeared off to find…clothes apparently.

Leaving Agatha alone with Dracula.

She still looked very displeased with him.

“As soon as I figure out how to get you out of my system, you’re gone.” She told him suddenly and he blinked up at her.

Well, at least she wasn’t intent on killing him anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Drac, he's at a bit of a low point here. Don't worry, he perks up a bit in the next chapter when he starts to feel better. 
> 
> I mean, he's headed to a private abode with Agatha. Think of the possibilities!


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof, apologies for any errors. I have a migraine looming on the horizon and I'm also listening to Hamilton which means I have to sing along to all parts and do some actions.

**Chapter 13 – Systemic**

**_Molly’s Place…_ **

Dracula stood in the open plan living area of Doctor Molly’s ‘flat’ and extended his arm, his fingers sifting through the golden light of the sun spilling in through the parted curtains.

He marvelled at the simple heat, that brilliant light, pure and unfiltered, falling on his pale skin. How many centuries had he been without this? How many decades upon decades had he wished to look upon the sun once more? Feel her warmth, the cleansing light spilling over his sinning self?

Dracula stepped forward, gripping the curtains and pulling them wide. He was careful to stay his strength so they weren’t hauled down off the railing entirely. He was very aware he was a guest in someone else’s home. A guest who had not had to be specifically invited over the threshold to enter. He had hesitated in the doorway, upon their arrival, and Agatha had simply raised an eyebrow at him and made to shut the door on him if he didn’t enter as quickly as he was able.

He tilted his head back, letting the sun’s rays fall over him. Bathing him in light. A smile tugged at his lips. The light still seared his eyes, so unaccustomed to the glare but he cared nothing for that, nor the green spots that danced in his vision after being so dazzled.

He simply revelled in the light.

“Prrt?”

Dracula lifted his head, looking down the length of his body and blinked at the small animal attempting to wind itself around his calves. This would be the cat then. It was very large for a domestic feline, Dracula thought, but seemed friendly enough. It purred deep in its chest and seemed to have taken an instant liking to Dracula. Not that he could blame the beast, he was far more amenable to such things than Agatha.

Agatha whom had busied herself elsewhere in the apartment and seemed intent on staying as far away from Dracula as was possible.

“Hello, Toby. Shall we feed you?” Dracula bent, petting Toby amongst his ears and along the soft fur of his back.

Another oddity of modern life, Dracula thought. Keeping animals as ‘pets’. As far as he understood it, Molly kept Toby solely for companionship. She fed and watered the animal wanting nothing save his company in return. He was not even required to hunt the local vermin in order to earn his keep.

Still, Dracula thought Toby a tolerable sort and the feeling was obviously returned. The big orange cat herded Dracula towards the kitchen, chirping and purring on his way, and led Dracula to a cupboard.

“In here?” Dracula opened the cupboard and stared blankly at the contents.

Well, judging by the picture of the resplendent feline on the box, this would be the cat food. Toby’s yowling intensified as Dracula pulled a metallic pouch from within the box and took, quite frankly, an embarrassing amount of time to figure out how to open it and squish the contents into a fish decorated bowl for the beast.

Toby fell upon the offering with a gusto that Dracula would have, himself, reserved for a fresh throat but he had to admit that Toby was considerably neater in his eating.

Another few moments of opening random cupboards allowed Dracula to find the rubbish bin to dispose of the foil packet.

He nodded to himself at having completed the only task Molly had asked of them for staying in her home and glanced about the kitchen.

It was opulent, to his standards, but he had known that it would be. The flat was positively palatial for just one person to live in. Stuffed to the brim with modern appliances that Dracula could only guess the meaning of in some cases. The kitchen windowsill was overrun with tiny potted plants. Little pockets of greenery in the drab of the London skyline beyond.

Dracula cocked his head, considering that a doctor of death would surround herself with life where she could.

Well, had he not spent centuries attempting the same thing?

Admittedly his attempts had been far bloodier, but it wasn’t like he could enjoy a garden when he had been unable to go out in the sun.

Dracula petted a purple edged leaf of one of the plants and hummed in his throat. Perhaps he would start a small window garden, once he had obtained a fitting property for himself and Agatha. He understood not many people had gardens in London but…well, he might add that to his list of requirements.

“Don’t kill it.”

Dracula turned his head, wincing when the healed wound in his throat pulled. He still felt a little creaky, despite being much better than he had been. He turned his attention to Agatha when her words registered.

“What possible reason would I have for killing it?” He frowned.

“Have you ever needed a reason in the past?” Agatha arched a brow and Dracula huffed out a breath through his nose.

“Back to venom, I see.” Dracula turned, leaning back against one of the dark stone worktops to regard her. He folded his arms over his chest and didn’t miss the way Agatha’s gaze tracked over the bunch of muscle over his biceps. “I was thinking, in this modern world of convenience, I shall need something to fill my time. Perhaps I shall take up gardening.”

Agatha blinked at him. Seemingly nonplussed. Then she coughed something that might have been a laugh had it not caught her so by surprise.

“Gardening?!” Agatha bit her lip and narrowed her eyes at him. “You?”

“Why not? I confess now that the sun has been returned to me…I wish to spend more time outdoors. Having a garden to tend would be as good an excuse as any.”

“Gardening requires _patience_.” Agatha reminded him, stepping deeper into the kitchen and picking up the kettle. She herded him out of the way so she might fill it at the sink.

“I waited centuries to meet you. I would think a few months between seasons would be paltry in comparison.”

“You didn’t spend centuries waiting for _me_.” Agatha snapped at him. “You gorged and rutted your way across Europe until we happened to cross paths. Then you killed everyone I know and then me.”

“You’ve hardly been innocent in filling your time since the _Demeter_.” Dracula pointed out mildly, watching as she switched the kettle on to boil. Just a switch. No open fire. Marvellous. “Becoming an international monster hunter. Not exactly a stitching circle, is it?”

“Killing beasts that murder by the hundred was a hobby I started late in life but I have found it to be _very_ rewarding.” Agatha turned to face him, leaning against the worktop at his side. Inches away. “You’ve no one to blame but yourself for giving me a taste for it.”

“You haven’t killed me yet.” Dracula noted quietly. “You said we would, as soon as we escaped the Harkers. You said we’d try and kill each other. I confess, I have no homicidal feelings towards you…and you did go out of your way to have me put back together.”

“A mere chemical imbalance. My body feels possessive of yours. That is all.”

“Oh.” Dracula grinned slowly. “Is that all?”

“Yes. That’s all. You’re equally as replaceable as any other male in my life. As soon as I ascertain how to rid myself of this want, I can rid myself of you.” Agatha grinned at him winsomely and Dracula’s eyes narrowed. 

“Sounds fake, but okay.” Dracula parroted something a blood memory supplied at her attitude and she rewarded him with a snort of disdain. “I must confess, becoming one of a matriarchal species is…exciting.”

Agatha eloquently raised an eyebrow at him.

“Everything you’ve said makes me think that the female of our species is far deadlier than the male. I am not at all surprised that you -ah- evolved into one upon your mortal termination. You were always the bossy sort.”

“Heaven forefend that a woman make her way in life.”

“It’s your precious book that harps on about women being inferior and the originators of sin, nothing to do with me.” Dracula laid a hand on his chest. “In fact, I may have been the first feminist.”

“Good god.” Agatha muttered, turning away from him to see the kettle as it finished boiling. “This ought to be good.”

“Feminists love women. I have always adored the fairer sex.” Dracula prowled a little closer to her, wary that she held a kettle of boiling water but nodded when she glanced at him when retrieving cups from the cupboard. “Feminists also believe that women should be given leadership roles. Put in charge of things. I’d very much like you to be in charge of me. Have thought so since we met at the convent all those years ago.”

“Oh, is that so?” Agatha seemed amused, which he was thankful for.

She was still testy about the convent and he supposed she had the right to be but he also did not want to have any further limbs removed from himself should she become vexed. He’d like to remain in one piece for at least another day. Just for the variety, really. 

“I do have a habit of doing as you ask.” Dracula shrugged a large shoulder and looked down, nonplussed, when she pressed a hot mug into his hand. “Uh…”

“Tea. You drink it.”

“I do have a liquid diet, my dear, but _tea_ isn’t really…”

“You’re not a vampire anymore. You’re not undead. You’re going to have to start supplementing that blood craving at some point.” Agatha reminded him wryly. She smirked when he hesitated a moment more. “I thought you did whatever I asked?”

“You haven’t asked me anything yet.” Dracula murmured, sniffing cautiously at the tea. It did not repel him as it might have before the Harkers reset him.

“Will you drink the tea?” Agatha mocked him lightly, eyes wide and guileless.

“Since it is you that asks.” Dracula agreed magnanimously and cautiously sipped at the brew she had handed him. His brows rose. “Sweet.”

“Sugar is a common commodity these days.” Agatha murmured.

“Thank you.” Dracula sipped again, humming at the flavours.

There was an underlying bitterness to the tea though it was tempered by the milk and sugar she had added. Dracula could not precisely say that he was a _fan_ but it wasn’t terrible. It reminded him a little of…what had they called it?

“Is coffee still a thing?” Dracula looked up at Agatha and she blinked at him, her lips quirking in that way that meant she was trying not to laugh at him.

Luckily for him, it was one of his favourite expressions, because she wore it for him often.

“If by ‘thing’ you mean ‘multibillion dollar industry’ then…yes.” Agatha smiled. “There are coffee shops on every street corner these days. Arguably the world runs on it.”

“Good thing I invested in coffee back in the day then. It was one of my favoured drinks when I was alive. The only things the Turks had worth having.”

“So you’ve always been a decadent hedonist?”

“Why do you think you fascinate me so? Only the finest things in life hold my attention.” Dracula watched that baffle her, refusing to let her gaze slip from his as he drank deeply of his tea. It was growing on him. Though he suspected that was more to do with her making it than the actual contents of the mug.

“Don’t do that.” Agatha frowned.

“Do what?”

“Make out like I’m…Helen of Troy.” Agatha waved a free hand dismissively. “I am not a great beauty. Never have been. Too many sharp edges.”

“If we’re going to use Greek epics to allegorise us then I must insist on being the Achilles to your Patroclus.” Dracula finished his tea and set it aside. “Warriors do adore warriors, my dear. I quite believe your sharp edges to be essential.”

“Achilles died in the Iliad. So did Patroclus for that matter.” Agatha noted wryly.

“Yes. When Achilles heard of Patroclus’ death, his rage was so great that he slew Hector despite knowing that the battle would lead to his death. I thought you dead on the rig. When that thing hurled you from the window. Did you not wonder how I found the bravery to walk into the sun?”

Agatha went still, staring at him. Her cup of tea hung slack in her hand for a moment and then she shook herself, clearing her throat.

“It was a stressful situation.”

“Warlord. Stressful situations are somewhat run of the mill for me.” Dracula stepped closer to her, wondering how close she would let him get. “My decision might have been hastily made and irrational…but it was informed.”

“You’re supposed to be a coward.” Agatha set her tea aside with a clunk of the mug. “So neurotic that your addled brain perpetuated your own legend.”

“Are you disappointed that I was a coward or that my feelings for you overrode any sense of the craven survivalist?” Dracula was standing very close to her now, her chin had to tilt up so she could meet his gaze.

“I haven’t decided yet. Disappointment is such a blanketing emotion where you are concerned.”

Dracula grinned. Well, he had hardly come to expect poetry and flowers from her. She would not be Agatha if the rose of her beauty was without thorns.

“Well, my love, should you decide what to do with this information, let me know. I think I shall wait in the sunshine until you decide what you wish to do with me.” Dracula leaned back from her, suppressing his smile when she swayed a little with him, clearly wishing to keep their proximity. She blinked and straightened.

“And if I decide I want nothing more to do with you? That I want you gone?”

“My rational self hopes that I would love you enough to let it be so…though that darker part of me that is selfish would ask that you devour every bit of me. Better to sustain you than to be nothing at all in your life.” Dracula shrugged a shoulder.

“You’d choose nothingness over a new eternity in the sun?” Agatha scoffed.

“Nothingness won’t pain me. After all this time, would you really let me hurt?” Dracula watched her for a moment and smirked when she had no response.

He turned away, leaving her with her tea and her decision in the kitchen.

If this afternoon was the only light he was to have then he would enjoy every second of it.

**_Later…_ **

Agatha jerked the hood up over her head and stepped out of the block of flats and into the busy London street. She huffed out an irritated breath, painfully aware that the coat she had borrowed from Molly rode high up on her ribs as she was considerably taller than her pathologist friend.

London had turned grey as the afternoon had marched on. Clouds marred the sky and a grey drizzle roved in gusts across the city. Agatha had left Dracula lazing on the floor of the living room, Toby the cat sprawled across his chest enjoying a thorough petting, both males enjoying the more sporadic sunshine as the afternoon had worn on.

They had been blissful, content, quiet…and it was driving Agatha up the sodding wall.

Agatha’s long legs ate up the pavement beneath her feet, she ducked her head in her ill-fitting hood and powered towards the nearby parade of shops. Her canvas shoes were ill protection against the drizzling rain, her feet soaked and freezing in seconds but the cold served as a decent distraction from the thoughts that had been plaguing her all afternoon.

Dracula wanted her to eat him.

Agatha huffed out an annoyed breath, stuffing her hands deeper into her borrowed pockets and restrained herself to a growl that only vaguely alarmed a nearby pedestrian.

Just twenty-four hours before she’d have leapt at the chance. Drained him dry in a hot second and carried on with her existence without sparing him a second thought. Content in the knowledge that she had bettered the world by removing his predatory presence from it.

But… _but…_

But that had been before. A lot had happened in the last twenty-four hours. He had done things that she never would have credited him with. He had charmed a mermaid, brought down an oil rig, massacred himself to get to her because she had been taken from him and then walked into the sun -the thing he feared most of all- because he had thought her dead.

It hadn’t really occurred to Agatha at the time. She’d been busy doing other things like climbing an oil rig and shooting a ghoul in a broken suit of armour, but that was what he had done. He had waded into sunlight, something he had fully believed would burn him down to the marrow of his bones and he had done it because…because he had thought he was now living in a world without her in it.

And Agatha had no idea what to do with that.

What did one do with the knowledge that Count Dracula, world’s most infamous vampire, sociopath, glutton and professional sexy bastard, wanted to turn down an infinity of sunrises and sunsets unless…unless _she_ -of all people- was with him?

How was she even supposed to _process_ that?

Then the bastard had sauntered across the flat and sprawled out on the floor with Toby to bask and enjoy the afternoon as if it were his last.

Because that was what he wanted. In this moment. If she wouldn’t have him then he didn’t want any of it. Didn’t see the point in immortality unless he had someone -someone specific- to spend it with.

Bloody cheek.

Imagine dumping that on her and then going for a fucking _nap_!

Agatha reached a battered little shop and ducked inside. The place was rammed with walls of mobile phones, second hand and brand new, and a lone man behind the counter.

Perfect.

It was five minutes, a brief snack, and Agatha had a new mobile phone to play with. She ducked back out into the rain and went in search of some money. Food was harder to get at this time of day without paying for it and that had been her excuse for leaving Molly’s flat in the first place.

Agatha could eat _a lot_ of food and that was before she’d been left for days on end with nothing to sustain her but blood that was unpalatable to say the least. She needed living energy from a willing host (and they were all willing once she had her teeth in them) as well as some delicious good old fashioned calories. She had no desire to eat Molly out of house and home, particularly considering that Molly was putting them up for the day as she pulled a double shift at Bart’s.

Agatha powered on her new mobile, ditching the box and other rubbish in a nearby bin and busied herself with setting the new thing up. She only really needed it for one call but it might have to last her a couple of days so best to do things properly. Whilst fiddling with that, she multitasked, searching for a likely target.

The pattering of rain made London an ideal hunting ground. Everyone always had places to be in London which made them rude and inattentive. The rain compounded that, ducking heads and letting Agatha observe as she ducked into an abandoned doorway and huddled into a step to pick out her next donor for the afternoon.

Agatha smirked when the phone powered on and she punched an extensive number in from memory, clapping the handset to her ear even as she spotted her next meal.

A human woman powering along the street, mobile phone clapped to her ear. Distinctive short haircut with cheaper than she thought they were blonde highlights and faint lines on her over madeup face that came from sneering no doubt. The woman tutted as a beggar asked for spare change, told the poor man to get a job and she surged past Agatha with a raking glance at Agatha’s height and apparent offensiveness for simply existing.

Perfect.

Agatha dropped down off her step and seamlessly joined the busy street again. She listened to the ringing from her own phone in her ear and prowled after the angry blonde.

“ _Frank’s Taxidermy, you snuff ‘em, we stuff ‘em.”_

Agatha grinned, she did so love the shell companies that the BPRD used sometimes.

“Hi, it’s Buffy, can I talk to Frank?” Agatha spoke into her cellphone, peeling off down a side street after her favoured blonde.

 _“Frank’s not in right now, hon. Said somethin’ about seein’ a man about a dog.”_ The drawling response continued without missing a beat. _“Can I take a message?_ ”

“Just tell Frank I called. He can reach me on this number. Thank you.” Agatha hung up, stuffing her phone into her pocket and quickened her pace.

She had to time it just right.

An opening to an alleyway, cobbles that had to be negotiated in high heels and a well placed jab of her toe sent the woman staggering. Agatha made soothing sounds, catching her and saving her from falling on her face. She steered her into the alleyway, ducked under the woman’s umbrella to save her from losing an eye and sank her teeth into the soft skin of her neck.

The woman’s screech died before it could manifest, Agatha’s mind bullying hers into silence. She put her under with a strong suggestion that she just wanted to be _very agreeable_ for the next few minutes.

A rasp of Agatha’s tongue closed the bloodied wound and Agatha straightened up again, aware that there would be witnesses just a few feet away.

“You alright there? Nearly a nasty fall.” Agatha grinned, angling the woman’s umbrella to hide her face from other pedestrians so they wouldn’t see the slack and vacant expression on her face.

“No, no, no need for a monetary reward. I’m quite sure, well, if you insist.” Agatha waited patiently as the thralled woman sluggishly dug into her purse, found a fistful of notes and handed them over to Agatha.

“Oh , well, thank you so much. No, you keep your credit cards. Just try and be a little nicer to people, hmm?” Agatha pocketed the money, lifted her hand and snapped her fingers.

The woman jolted, blinking, and stared at Agatha.

“You alright? You nearly fell.” Agatha put on her best Londoner’s accent and expression of concern.

The woman opened her mouth to snap something blistering and then seemed to change her mind.

“I’m fine.” She said stiltedly. “Uh, thank you.”

“Not a problem. It’s a rough part of town, want to stay out of alleyways like this, eh?” Agatha winked at the woman, showing all her teeth and left the alleyway, melting into the foot traffic again without a backward glance.

She dropped a couple of notes in the cup of the homeless man as she passed and went to find some food.

It was a short walk to a local supermarket, Agatha surreptitiously counted the notes fisted in her pocket. More than enough for a decent food shop and allowed herself to be distracted by the trilling of her phone in her pocket.

“Buffy speaking.”

 _“Big sister, Aggie!”_ A booming male voice made her wince and jerk the phone from her ear. “ _Where ya been?!”_

 _“Hellboy, shut- -shut it, you’ll deafen the girl_.” A second man spoke and Agatha smirked.

Never mind that Broom was _several decades_ her junior, he still called her girl. It might have been less endearing had they not both known that she could devour him with no problems whatsoever.

“Hello, boys.” Agatha couldn’t stop her smile. Broom at least was competent even if she didn’t find him entirely likeable every time they spoke. She did adore Hellboy though. “I’m in London. Arrived back this morning. Staying with a pal right now.”

Agatha scooped up a basket and kept her Londoner accent, milling through the supermarket and wondering what one gave to a newly turned Immortal who hadn’t had a meal in centuries. She dithered a moment more and then began to fill the basket with a little bit of everything. She knew she’d eat all of it and if Dracula turned his nose up then he could just starve.

She ignored the small part of her that insisted she had to provide for him. It was the twenty first century, he was a big boy and could do his own providing.

 _“You’re not staying in one of the safehouses?”_ Broom queried.

“Well, I didn’t want to disturb anyone. Specially since some of your friends have been talking behind my back.” Agatha wriggled past an old lady buying what seemed to be a whole trolley full of sugar and made her way to the dessert section. A week like this week meant she deserved chocolate.

 _“We’ve already rooted out who sold you to the Harkers. They have been taken care of. Though I suppose they could have betrayed any number of secrets in that time, not just your whereabouts._ ” Broom heaved a sigh. _“I assume that you would prefer either Hellboy or myself were dispatched to collect you?_ ”

“Don’t rush on my account. _”_ Agatha drawled, debating briefly between eclairs and chocolate fondant cake and then rolled her eyes. Obviously she was having both.

 _“We’re already en route. Should arrive at Heathrow in the next four hours.”_ Broom said something away from the phone, presumably to Hellboy. He spoke to her again. _“We can meet wherever you prefer._ ”

“I’ll call you back when I decide.” Agatha wasn’t making any decisions right now. Least of all in a very public place where she might be overheard.

Paranoid, perhaps, but paranoia did not mean that they weren’t out to get you.

 _“Very well. Until then._ ” Broom agreed with paranoia, veterans in the BPRD were a rarity after all.

Agatha hung up, stowing her phone in her pocket again and went to pay for her gathered goodies. She dumped the lot onto the conveyer belt and even managed to make inane conversation with the cashier about the weather outside.

Of course, once she was weighed down with her bags, out trudging on the street again, Agatha was left alone with her thoughts once more.

She was still no closer to figuring out what the hell she was going to do with Dracula.

Damn it. 

**_Back in the Flat…_ **

Dracula glanced up from browsing through a picture book of photographs taken from the International Space Station (fascinating on multiple levels) and watched Agatha move around the kitchen.

Dracula was glad that she had returned, scented with blood and irritation but unharmed. He had been reluctant to let her wander around London without him, considering they had only just escaped the Harkers, but he had rightly sensed that she would not tolerate his presence. He did not think that she was yet aware that he could sense her, mentally, even across distances now. It was the only reason he had allowed her out of his sight. The surety that he could now find her if he but willed it. The Harkers would never be able to leverage her against him again.

Well, they could try but fooling Agatha the same way twice would be an exercise in futility and he suspected the Harkers were too busy licking their own wounds to bother with round two right now.

So on the couch Dracula remained, Toby sprawled across his lap beneath the hardback book filled with colour (colour!) photographs. Agatha had returned with the spoils of her trip outside in heavy bags. He had attempted to help her in the kitchen but she had firmly shooed him out again and told him not to get in the way.

Dracula frowned. One thing this modern world was lacking in was _staff_. Not something that had bothered him when he had been but a vampire, the undead, but now he had to _eat_. He would require a diet of solid foods, so would Agatha.

He had no idea how to cook.

Dracula scowled at the notion of being inexpert at anything but it wasn’t like he’d ever had the opportunity to learn. He’d been raised to be a warrior since he’d been old enough to swing a practice blade and what little cooking he’d undertaken centuries ago had consisted of stirring miscellaneous slop in a pot over an open flame. Now there were modern conveniences. Ovens that warmed in mere minutes at the switch of a button. A _microwave_ that heated foods…somehow. Fridges that would keep food fresh for days and freezers that could do it for months. Not to mention that telecommunication and combustion engine driven travel meant that a whole world of cuisine was now available for exploring.

Dracula scratched at Toby’s ears as he mulled it over. Even if Agatha was going to feed on him, he himself would have to be in good health for her to do so. Dracula knew from personal experience about being what you consumed and it was as true of all herd animals, including humans or other bipeds. He would be infinitely more tempting to her if he had a varied diet, surely?

He was going to have to learn to cook.

“Hmm?” Agatha twisted to look at him and Dracula stilled when he realised he had said something aloud.

“I was thinking that I shall have to learn to cook.”

Agatha blinked at him. Evidently nonplussed. She frowned.

“Thought you were intent on me eating you?”

“That was one of the possibilities, yes. Excuse me, Toby.” Dracula lifted the warm length of the cat and set him carefully aside on the couch.

“Mrrp.” Said Toby.

“Though, if you do decide to keep me around, at least for a while. I had best be useful…and delicious.” Dracula cautiously padded towards the kitchen area again but wisely kept to his side of the island worktop.

“You actually want to learn to cook?” Agatha stilled in…chopping some chicken into cubes. She had a pan simmering with boiling water on the hob, the makings of a sauce in another pan and it did smell delicious but Dracula could tell little more than that.

“I understand that it is a basic skill in this day and age, is it not?”

“You could always order in.” Agatha shrugged, lifting the chopping board and using the back of the knife to slide the chicken into the sauce. “If you settle in a metropolis like London, there will always be somewhere open to deliver to the door.”

“I think it still a skill basic to my being self-sufficient.” Dracula frowned. He was not accustomed to being unable to do things for himself. Not when it came to continuing his day to day existence.

He had always been a proficient hunter, searching for game in the woods in his fief before he had become a vampire. He had helped to keep the kitchens stocked with whatever wild game the cook might desire. That had been his contribution.

After becoming one of the undead, dinner had become a matter of charm and ambush and zero preparation required. As a solitary creature, he’d had none but his failed brides to rely on him to provide which he had done easily and willingly.

Agatha did not need that. She did not need him to hunt for her, bring her human game or otherwise. He had been watching her for several moments whilst she prepared a meal. She moved about her task mechanically. Competently, certainly, but she did not appear to enjoy it in any great way.

Perhaps it was something he might do for her.

“I suppose you haven’t had the need of solid food in quite a while.” Agatha murmured. “You’ll need both now. Blood and food. Neither on its own will sustain you.”

Dracula dipped his chin in a nod, cautiously optimistic at the lack of venom in her tone. Her jaw rocked to the side as she considered him.

“Come here, then. You can start learning now.” Agatha waved him around the worktop and Dracula hurried to obey her. Standing at her elbow expectantly.

She levelled a look at him, an expression he could not read and then handed him the spoon for the sauce.

“Stir this. Keep it from sticking to the pan. I need to drain the pasta.”

Stirring seemed simple enough.

Dracula accepted his task and stirred the sauce whilst watching Agatha drain…pasta. He had heard the word but was baffled as to what it was before he saw her drain it from the simmering pot. Small shapes like bowties falling into a colander as the starchy water flowed down the drain.

“Italian?”

“Of a sort. I think a real Italian would be genuinely offended by the notion. Chicken alfredo.” Agatha returned to the hob with the steaming pasta and Dracula made room for her, stirring continually as she poured pasta into sauce.

It was quite the closest she had been to him since the oil rig and even longer since he’d actually had the opportunity to enjoy said proximity. He allowed himself to notice but was wary not to be distracted. He would not fail at such a simple task as _stirring_.

Dracula watched with interest as Agatha moved the controls of the hob and the blue flames died away under the pan. She took over the pot after she had sourced plates for them, heaping portions into each oversized dish. Dracula’s brows rose at the size of the meal but he said nothing.

He might be a man out of place in time, but he suspected commenting on a woman’s choice of food was still frowned upon.

Agatha set aside what remained in the pan and put the lid on.

“For Molly. She’ll want something when she gets in.”

Dracula nodded at the unspoken instruction not to bloody touch it and accepted the plates from her, allowing himself to be shooed towards a small table under the window by the kitchen area.

“Wine?”

“Please.” Dracula nodded, setting places for them with the cutlery she provided. “When do you expect Molly back?”

“Within the next hour or so.” Agatha shrugged, pouring them both large glasses of white wine.

“You care for her.”

Agatha glanced sharply at him.

“I owe Molly a great debt, I mean her no harm.” Dracula reminded her. “I simply thought it unusual that you would spend time with a human that evidently know what you are outside of a blood relative and yet Zoe had no idea that you were still alive.”

“I knew her better when she was younger.” Agatha admitted after a moment, approaching the table with the wine. She seemed baffled when Dracula pulled out her chair for her but let him help her sit. “When she began to look more and more like me with the passing years…well, you of all people know it’s much harder to be a monster with a mirror to look into.”

“I hardly think you to be the more monstrous between the two of us.” Dracula noted idly, taking his seat opposite her. It was surprisingly domestic but he decided not to comment on that.

“That and…she was working with the Harkers. As distantly as it was. I’ve no doubt that she had little idea of how truly grotesque the actual Harker Institute was outside of her own little domain but…if she’d ever found out what I was…”

“You think your own kin would turn against you?” Dracula frowned.

“Family is not what it was. Blood relations are not the be all and end all of people these days. Some people find their families. Some people build their own. My continued survival was not something I was willing to risk on such tenuous nepotism.” Agatha sipped her wine.

Dracula ate as he mulled that over and his brows rose.

“It’s good.”

“I’ve been cooking a long time.” Agatha smirked. “Much easier in a modern kitchen than in a scullery in a wood fired oven.”

“I am still amazed at how much variety there is.” Dracula ate more pasta. He’d never had it before but it was delicious.

“We don’t boil everything anymore either.” Agatha smirked and hummed low in her throat, considering him as he ate. “Hellboy and Broom are on their way to London.”

“Those are…Abraham and Elisa’s friends?” Dracula sourced the names.

“And mine. Colleagues in the BPRD.”

“BPRD?”

“Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defence. My employers, if you will. Think of them as the benign version of the Harkers. We guard against threats to humanity that are of a…less mainstream origin.”

“Hellboy is an odd name.” Dracula noted idly and Agatha smirked.

“He’s the odd sort.” Agatha ate delicately of her meal. “I’m going to meet them tonight. We’ll go to a secure location until my home can be secured by people I trust. I was betrayed by a member of the BPRD, bought by the Harkers. We’ll need some time to assess the damage.”

Dracula tensed minutely. He had the distinct sense that ‘we’ had not included him.

“Of course, this leaves me with the problem of _you_.” Agatha hummed. “I’m reluctant to leave you in my wake because there are quite enough monsters abroad in the greater London area…and yet I can’t _quite_ bring myself to kill you yet.”

“A vexing issue.” Dracula sipped of his wine. Feeling a little better about the world. She didn’t want to abandon him. It was a start.

“That being said, the BPRD has standing orders to contain or destroy all vampires on sight and you, dear Count, are one of the more infamous amongst that number.”

“It’s a living.” Dracula shrugged a large shoulder.

“Doctor Bloxam said something interesting in the laboratory.”

“Oh?” Dracula could not keep the thrum of a growl from his voice. Bloxam was responsible for a great deal of his pain, it was true, but she had _also_ been in the room when Agatha had been strapped down to a table.

Really, it was rather lucky that Agatha had only beheaded her as Dracula may have done something distinctly…messier.

“She said that concubi, when bonded, are capable of harmonious symbiosis. Your feral nature would provide me with more than enough to feed on whilst my body would produce an excess of red blood cells to satisfy your needs.”

Dracula blinked. Not entirely sure what she was driving at. He recognised many of the words but had been unable to parse her meaning entirely.

“In short, neither of us would have to feed from anyone other than each other. You would have _no reason_ to kill anyone. Ever.”

Dracula cocked his head, thinking that over. Well, he could think of several reasons for murdering people, they were only going to live a few short decades anyway, but it was true the hunger for blood no longer burned in the bottom of his lungs like a broken rib.

Still, he did not think that was what Agatha wished to hear.

“You wish to…test me? See if I can go a set length of time without killing someone?” Dracula guessed.

“Let’s call it a trial period. I suspect if left to your own devices you may be responsible for more death than religion so…my putting up with you may save a lot of lives.”

“And it means you don’t have to go against all those pesky instincts screaming at you to keep me and claim me as your own.” Dracula spoke innocently enough, sipping of his wine, but he did want her to admit it.

Agatha rolled her eyes and then huffed out an annoyed breath.

“That might also be a way of looking at it.”

“To clarify; I don’t murder the peons and I get to stay with you?”

“That would be a relative term. I will require personal space.”

“We will be in the same building in which we may both move freely and I shall have access to you when we are both amenable to same?”

“…yes.” Agatha allowed after a long moment and Dracula sat back in his seat, grinning and showing all of his teeth.

“Perfect.”

Agatha glared at him but she did not disagree.

He’d take that. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Awwww, aren't they cute together?!
> 
> Dysfunctional, sure, but certainly cute in their own way. 
> 
> Yes, tis a headcanon of mine that Dracula would be happily domestic with Agatha being the bread winner. He would like nothing more than to stay at home with the anklebiters, learning to cook and garden whilst Agatha is out running the BPRD. Fight me bout it.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys!
> 
> Sorry for missing the deadline yesterday. I was staving off a migraine before it could fully form and that just wouldn't happen if I so much as looked at a computer screen. 
> 
> But here I am and here we are with our next chapter! This one was an absolute pain in the ass to write. I hope it turned out okay.

**Chapter 14 – Trial Period**

**_BPRD Safehouse, Undisclosed Location…_ **

The door to the safehouse opened and Dracula stiffened when confronted with…the actual Devil.

“Who the fuck are you?” The demon demanded and Dracula tensed even further.

“He’s with me, Hellboy.” Agatha twisted out from behind Dracula to grin at her friend and the demon’s expression lifted in a broad grin.

“Big Sis!” His voice boomed from within a broad crimson chest and he threw his arms wide.

Dracula’s claws unsheathed but Agatha had skirted him before he could stop her and stepped into the demon’s embrace. Dracula’s brows made a dash for his hairline at such a sight. How long had she been calling him a beast and a devil and _he_ didn’t get cuddles.

On the verge of a huff, Dracula stepped over the threshold of the large house with barely a hesitation and closed the door behind him.

Hellboy lifted Agatha clean off the floor with the force of his hug and spun her around with a joyful laugh. Dracula took the opportunity to study the other male and was further perplexed when he realised that this may be a literal demon.

Hellboy was as tall as Dracula at the tops of his shorn off horns. He had a mane of inky black hair tied back into a loose tail. His skin was a deep red colour beneath the grey hooded sweatshirt and black jeans he wore. His face was crudely handsome in a pugilistic sort of way with glowing ember coloured eyes. A red slinking tail, twitched naked at his back and cloven toed hooves supported his massive weight.

Dracula did not gain the sense of great malice from the man but…he wasn’t entirely sure that he could take him in a fight either.

“You okay?” Hellboy finally set Agatha down onto the tiled floor of the entry hall. His accent an American drawl. “Harkers all dead?”

“Yes and all that we could find.” Agatha clasped Hellboy by the biceps, grinning up at him. Her smile dimmed a little when Hellboy’s orange eyes darted to Dracula. She waved between them. “My companion, Count Dracula. Dracula, this is Hellboy.”

“You shitting me?!” Hellboy raised his eyebrows at Agatha and she chuckled.

“No. It’s really him.”

“Awesome! Dracula. Nice to meet you, man!” Hellboy extended his hand and Dracula accepted, correctly guessing that Agatha would approve of nothing less. “You’re, like, number three on the Most Wanted list.”

“Only number three?” Dracula raised a brow and glanced at Agatha.

“It’s not a _competition_.” Agatha reminded him firmly. “You were beaten out by a sentient plague and a particularly cranky gorgon. Both of which exceed your body count by the thousand.”

“Well.” Dracula felt a little mollified by that, both monsters sounded suitably terrifying.

“I can’t believe I’m meeting you. Agatha must have read that book to me, like, a thousand times.” Hellboy grinned down at Agatha and didn’t appear to notice the way she winced a little at the mention of the manuscript.

“A book? About little old me? Agatha, am I famous?” Dracula grinned.

“Infamous, more like. I had it published.” She admitted after a moment, dropping her hands into her pockets. “A sensationalised version of events. Telling how to destroy vampires.”

“She left out the sex bits when it was a bedtime story.” Hellboy smirked and turned to look down at Agatha again. “I’ll go get dad. He’s been worried about ya.”

“Thank you.” Agatha smiled for him again and braced herself when Hellboy whirled away to find his father.

Leaving her alone with Dracula.

He didn’t even wait until Hellboy was out of earshot.

“The ‘sex parts’? Agatha, they’ll _never_ let you back in the church now.”

“Don’t need the church when you’re independently wealthy and have human rights, do you?” Agatha shrugged and started deeper into the house. She had a sudden urge to find the whiskey. “Sex sells. That has ever been true. The goal was to get as many people to read it as possible.”

“So…you swam ashore, killed a bunch of criminals supplied by a crossdressing pathologist, wrote a _book_ about me, with suitably scandalous sexy bits to sell it…then joined a secret government agency?” Dracula trailed gleefully after her.

“The BPRD doesn’t work for any one government.” Agatha corrected him. She located what appeared to be a small library and hoped in vain that Dracula might be distracted by the books. “It was actually the book that drew the BPRD to me. Apparently civilians shouldn’t know how to destroy the undead.”

“Cuts into their profits?”

“Something like that.” Agatha smiled wanly. “Drink?”

“Of you?”

“ _No._ ”

“No thank you.” Dracula smiled sweetly and it was only the fact that the decanter held a rare and expensive malt that saved him from having it thrown at his head at some speed. “If the BPRD is to protect humanity, why not publish a manual on how to protect themselves?”

“Because at the time of publishing, the average civilian could not tell the difference between the undead and a neighbour they simply did not like.”

Dracula twisted to see an older man enter the room. He nodded to Dracula but turned a smile to Agatha.

“How are you, my dear?”

“Found the whiskey.” Agatha raised her glass by way of answer. “Want one?”

“Do I want one of my own fifty year old malts? Yes please.” The man nodded, crossing to greet Dracula with an extended hand. “Professor Trevor Broom. Count Dracula, I presume?”

“The very same. Nice suit.” Dracula raked the man with a glance, shaking hands, and discounted him as a physical threat. Nothing but vanilla human there.

“I shall share the name of my tailor here in London.” Broom smiled, it didn’t reach his eyes, and he turned back to accept his drink from Agatha.

Dracula thought it either pride or stupidity that let the man show a confirmed mass murderer his back but then Hellboy loomed in the doorway once more. Dracula thought Broom perhaps cannier than originally suspected.

“Elisa and Abe are on their way. Their plane is due to land in a couple hours.” Hellboy crossed to an armchair, dropping down into it with a creak from the springs, and opened a bottle of beer with a flick of his thumb. “No drink for you, Drac?”

“Not a huge drinker of alcohols.” Dracula’s head ticked to the side at the shortening of his name. He decided after a moment that it was inoffensive. Perhaps only because Hellboy was evidently a favoured of Agatha.

He draped his arms behind his back, clasping one wrist in his hand and turned to study the books in the shelves around him.

“This place is new?” Agatha settled herself on the couch as Broom took the other armchair.

“Secured privately from the plane. House of a very old and very paranoid friend. The security measures have since been activated.” Broom flicked imaginary lint from the tweed over his knee and smiled congenially. “Any injuries to be taken care of?”

“Been there. Done that.” Agatha sipped of her whiskey and worked not to stiffen when Dracula ambled over to the couch and lowered himself to sit beside her.

He draped himself artfully and made a production of opening a book to read, ignoring everyone.

“Something catch your eye?” Agatha clipped at him.

“Found my How-To manual.” Dracula innocently turned the book so she could see the title embossed in gold over the hardback leather.

“ _Christ_.” Agatha rubbed at her forehead. His name emblazoned across the cover of the book and resigned herself to him reading it.

Well, as soon as he had heard of it, he had made it his life’s mission to read it. She should hardly be surprised that her book, now widely considered a classic of the horror genre, would be in residence of such a house. Particularly if the owner was friends with Broom.

“Been over this, wife. He’s not here. I am.” Dracula turned to the foreword and frowned. “Who’s Bram Stoker?”

“The mortal I hired to play author.” Agatha relented after a moment.

“You guys are married?” Hellboy straightened abruptly.

“Only legally and spiritually.” Dracula murmured, engrossed in reading.

“He paid a priest and a judge for a sham ceremony and paperwork whilst I was incapacitated and still human.” Agatha drawled.

“You were a vision in white, beloved.” Dracula turned a page and then frowned, pretending to think about it. “Or was it red?”

“I’ll eat you.” Agatha growled.

“Promises, promises.” Dracula turned another page, only half his attention on their banter and that irked Agatha far more than it should have. She wilfully turned back to Broom when he cleared his throat.

“This is true?”

“I am known as Agatha Balaur in some circles.”

“The Countess Dracula in others.” Dracula murmured and Agatha resisted the strong urge to beat him over the head with his precious book.

“Interesting.” Broom said after a moment.

“Fascinating.” Agatha rolled her eyes, sipping of her whiskey. “The Harkers’ influence has spread farther than we had initially thought. They knew of my ‘married’ name, what I was, how to transform Dracula from undead to immortal along with a whole slew of other details that are -quite frankly- alarming.”

“The base they held you at was destroyed?” Broom confirmed.

“It was a repurposed oil rig on the North Sea. We sank it as we escaped. I took their Chinook and we departed with the surviving three inmates; a Chupacabra, a partial werewolf and…minotaur? We parted ways after landing in London.”

“A partial werewolf?” Hellboy frowned. “How are you _part_ werewolf?”

“She looked mostly human aside from her nose and mouth. Those were permanently wolf. As far as I could tell. She used sign like Elisa and Abraham do to communicate.”

“You seem unsure of the minotaur.” Broom noted.

“She was smaller than a full minotaur, about Abe’s height. She had five fingers on each hand, her face appeared more human and she was capable of human speech.”

“And a Chupacabra?” Broom confirmed. He continued at Agatha’s nod. “Which are nigh unto extinct. I imagine a werewolf frozen mid transformation and a hybrid minotaur would both also be unique. As would a pair of concubi of considerable age and strength. The Harkers are collecting rarities?”

“The _Harkers,_ ” Agatha was not looking forward to this part of the conversation, “were after us for our parts. They planned to breed Dracula and I, harvest our progeny to use the stem cells for pharmaceutical treatments to aid humanity.”

The book in Dracula’s hand shredded neatly in two and he looked down at it, seemingly surprised that it was now in bits.

“That was a first edition.” Broom admonished lightly.

“Harvest.” Dracula spoke mainly to the carcass of the book in his hands. Hands that shook a little. He swallowed audibly and inhaled deeply.

Agatha was still a long moment, wondering what he might do. If he was going to snap with Broom in the room, she would have to move quickly to get the old human out of the way. Dracula could destroy a wide radius when vexed after all. She thought quickly to distract him and blurted the first thing that came to mind.

“You like the book?”

“You wrote yourself out of it, so it is evidently missing the best part.” Dracula tossed the book onto the low table and powered to his feet. “The ending leaves much to be desired. Excuse me.”

He left the room.

“Is, uh, he okay?” Hellboy watched the door swing shut behind the elder male.

“He didn’t know about that part.” Agatha murmured, draining her whiskey.

“I’ll admit that the appearance of his emotions seemed genuine.” Broom noted idly. “He apes humanity quite well.”

“No he doesn’t.” Agatha snapped. “He’s _terrible_ at pretending to care.”

“That seemed pretty believable to me.” Hellboy pointed after Dracula.

“Precisely.” Agatha clapped her tumbler onto the table beside the ruined book. “If you’ll excuse me, gentlemen.”

Agatha pushed to her feet and went to find Dracula.

Hellboy watched her leave, nonplussed and turned to his father.

“Soooo…they together or not?”

“I do believe, my dear boy, that she is deciding that right now.” Broom smirked into the rim of his glass and Hellboy simply nodded.

Sometimes it was just easier to pretend you knew what was going on.

**_Outside…_ **

It didn’t take Agatha long to find him.

She seemed to be keyed into his presence now, after all. She padded out of the French doors and onto a palatial patio. It looked out over a lit pool, steam curling from the heated water into the cool night air. The garden was lit with sparkling fairy lights and Agatha would have enjoyed it at any other time.

Dracula stood, his shadow sharp and blade like falling across the water. His feet braced apart and his arms folded over his chest. Even in a borrowed hoody and tracksuit trousers, he cut a powerful figure.

Agatha approached him quietly, she was past the point of being wary of him. She knew already he wasn’t going to hurt her. She drew level with him and hugged her arms around her waist.

She did not ask if he was alright. She could _see_ that he wasn’t.

“I didn’t ask.” He spoke after a long moment of airless silence.

“Hmm?” Agatha looked up at him.

“You distracted me by kissing me. That’s ever been your way. I’ve always been so easily led by you.” Dracula stared at the pool in front of him. A frown lowered his brow. “How badly?”

“How badly what?” Agatha genuinely needed him to narrow it down.

“How badly were you hurt?”

“I wasn’t.” Agatha continued when he looked at her sharply. “I really wasn’t. Bloxam told me her dastardly plan and I ripped out her throat when she got too close.”

“I can’t tell when you lie.” Dracula turned to face fully, studying her closely. “You were covered in blood.”

“Her blood. Not mine. I had the chance to free myself because you had released Ariel aboard the rig. They never touched me.”

“Why else would you kiss me, if not to hide something?!” Dracula loomed over her, getting angry now.

“Because I wanted to!” Agatha threw up her hands. Wasn’t that patently bloody obvious?! She growled when he just stared at her, spinning away to plant her hands on her hips and snarl at the trimmed box hedges.

“You don’t even like me.” Dracula faltered.

“That’s never bothered you in the past.” Agatha muttered.

“Because in the past, the only danger to you was _me._ I knew how to be careful of you. This is different. They want you for _parts_.”

“Parts which I’m rather attached to and intent on keeping.” Agatha spun back to look at him. “Remember who carried who off that rig. I’m far from helpless. Get that through your thick skull right now.”

“We should part ways.” Dracula said after a moment.

“Ex- _scuze_ you?!” Agatha’s brows rose dramatically. “This. Whole. FARCE. Occurred because you wanted to be all over me!”

“That was before I knew what they wanted. They want to take you apart. Grind you up for medicine. It has _never_ been my intent to be your end. If the only way to keep you alive is to part ways, then I shall do just that. The Harkers are looking for us as a pair. Not separately.”

 _“NO.”_ Agatha surprised even herself with the growl that thundered bass and heavy through her voice. “Every single time I’ve left you unattended for the past week has resulted in you being reduced to mincemeat. You got what you wanted, my attention. Now suffer the consequences.”

“I cannot protect you!”

“Who needs you to?!” Agatha threw her arms wide. “I don’t know if you noticed, dear husband, but I am many times your strength and _more_ than a match to your ferocity. I escaped the Harkers without a scratch, _despite_ you being a noble moron at every opportunity, and carried your dead weight out of there after you managed to run headfirst into every bullet in the North Sea! I have more than earned you!”

“What possible use could you have for me?!” Dracula all but roared. “If I cannot protect you- -then what?!”

“Then you _accompany_ me.” Agatha swept closer to him, teeth bared right back at him. “This is a new world you find yourself in, Dracula. Women do not cower at home whilst their men roam abroad. Did you truly expect that of me anyway? No matter the century?”

“Well…no.” Dracula admitted after a moment. He inhaled sharply and frowned down at her. His gaze dropped down her frame before clambering back up. “You’ve always been built for hunting.”

“Hmm.” Agatha rocked her chin up, mollified a little by that. “I am not _interested_ in being your little wife. I may be convinced of a partnership.”

“Partnership…” Dracula watched her with lightless eyes for a long moment. “I’m not sure I know how to do that.”

“Learn.” Agatha snapped, folding her arms over her chest with a thud.

They lapsed into silence. Dracula watching her with the consuming hunger with which he did _everything_. Agatha looking out across the twinkle lit garden and studying anything but him. She didn’t even know what she saw when she looked at him anymore.

“Wil you teach me?”

Agatha stiffened, his voice had been so quiet that she had been unsure that he had truly spoken. That it hadn’t been her own mind telling her what she wanted to hear. She glanced sharply at him, finding him watching her with that same rapt intensity. She raised an eyebrow.

“You can’t drink my memories like you would a human.” She said after a moment. “You’d have to learn the old fashioned way.”

“I am capable.”

“The Great Count Dracula, prepared to listen to a woman. Surely this would be a hardship for you. Stuck at the side of a nun, bowing to her limits and boundaries.”

“Not for me.” Dracula’s eyes never left hers. He refused to let her hide behind her mockery anymore. “Not when it’s you.”

Agatha swallowed hard. Unsure what to do with that.

She was used to the smarm, the predatory smirk. She was accustomed to his dangerous intent, his lustful hungers directed towards all and sundry. She had been a challenge because he had not understood her. She had not feared him, not outwardly, and that had maddened him because it marked her apart from the rest of his prey. He had been enchanted with the idea of owning her. Possessing her.

That was no longer the case. He knew that now. He had to. She was as strong as he. She could take or leave him and he knew it. He was in the position to be rejected and…he braved that anyway.

For her.

Agatha realised, at some point, she was going to have to start believing him. About wanting her. About his intent to remain at her side.

The evidence was beginning to truly mount up. That he was…attached to her.

He had given himself to the Harkers for her. Taken bullets for her. Befriended a monstrous mermaid of the Deep in order to get to her. He’d torn himself to ribbons and walked into the _sun_ when he had believed her harmed. Hurled himself at the only thing that could end him, in his mind, at the possibility of going on without her.

He said that he wanted her more than anything else. That he wanted her more than he wished for an eternity in the sun, but, did she believe him?

Could she?

He seemed to read it in her face and his chin rocked up. His eyes held a light she had never seen in them before and he smiled in what may have been a… _fond_ manner.

“It is alright, my love.” Dracula reached out slowly, giving her a chance to pull away. He took his hand in hers, bringing it to his lips to offer a cool kiss. “I have waited centuries for you. I believed in you long before you were even born. That I had another out there. Another half. I can wait until you recognise that in me.”

“You hate waiting. You have the attention span of a toddler. You find waiting insufferable.”

“As I have said; not for me. Not when it is you.”

Agatha opened her mouth to protest but he just shook his head, pressing a kiss to her cheek.

“I can wait until you believe me. I can prove it to you.”

Then he was gone, disappearing back into the house.

Agatha stared after him and clipped her teeth together when her mouth was hanging open.

What the hell had just happened? 

**_Upstairs…_ **

Dracula poked his head through the doorway and found the room beyond to be empty and untouched.

He would admit that the home of Broom’s friend was large and decadent. Palatial enough to satisfy even his exquisite tastes, but he barely glanced about himself as he padded into the room.

A huge bed dominated one side of the suite. Double doors and a single wide door lined the other wall amongst yet more bookcases groaning with further collections of literature of the rarer variety. Tapestries hung from the wall, depicting scenes of myth and monster, paintings continued the narrative and everything was draped artfully over everything else.

Dracula would admit to a mild curiosity as to how many of the myths and monsters he had thought little more than fairytales were actually living, breathing, creatures. He himself was supposed to be a fairytale. Hellboy downstairs was a literal demon. Abraham a creature of the deepest waters and he had a vague recollection of the werewolf and minotaur that Agatha had mentioned.

Not to mention the sentient plague and gorgon of no small venom that outranked him on the most wanted list.

The world certainly seemed busier than when he had left it so suddenly after being blasted off the _Demeter._

Packed with monsters, tyrants, vampires, organisations to police the above and apparently the Harkers who were intent on grinding up anything they could find to turn a profit.

Something chilled and sharp flexed low in Dracula’s gut at the thought. Gooseflesh rolling over his arms and down his spine at the mere prospect of Agatha being… _harvested_ for such things.

He was repelled by the mere thought. He knew that she carried no heir as of yet. They had missed some of the steps vital to making that happen if it was to be carried out the old fashioned way…but the Harkers didn’t know that.

The Harkers didn’t know that and if they had other ‘research’ facilities in further international waters around the globe, if they had friends in low places that suspected Agatha might be carrying a fortune in her belly…well.

He could not, in good conscience, allow them to continue breathing.

So it was a choice.

Agatha wished him to be of peace. She wanted him tamed and kept to heel. She wanted him where she could see him, to keep an eye on him. She wanted him to stay away from the Harkers, under her protection, safe at her side.

But her side was not safe. None of her was.

Not so long as the Harkers existed.

It wasn’t even really much of a debate. He had meant what he had said. Living on wasn’t going to be any good for him, not without her. Being at her side, behaving, killing none to keep her happy…he could _do that_. He could. For her, he would. What need had he for the entertainment of the masses when Agatha had been far more captivating than any that had come before her?

Though his time of fun and fancy had passed. He lived in a new world. A world that at least partially believed in his existence and was quite enamoured with turning him into something they could bottle and sell.

Which he could use.

Dracula sighed, padding across the room to stand by the huge windows. He looked out into the night. The twinkling lights that decorated the hedgerows, the lasers that criss-crossed the lawns, presumably part of the security measures. Easy enough to avoid. Child’s play to one such as he.

Because he couldn’t play anymore.

What he _wanted_ was to stay with Agatha. He wished nothing more than to take her away, somewhere hot, somewhere decadent, somewhere with all the luxury she deserved. To begin to truly know her. To woo her into wishing to spend time with him because she didn’t. Not really.

By her own words, her body wanted him. Not her heart and not her beautiful mind. Her body loudly told her to keep him close because they physically matched but she didn’t even like him. She loathed him for what he had done to her, to her sisters, to everyone that he had happened to before her. He supposed she was right to do so, he had no illusions as to the horror of his own actions. Books had literally been written of his escapades after all.

Yes, what he wanted was to stay with her. To win her.

What he needed to do, was something entirely different.

The Harkers were still out there. They were still a threat and so long as that was the case…he could not have what he wanted.

Not now and perhaps not ever.

Dracula’s fingers worked the latch of the window. He pushed the heavy sash up, opening the room he had been given to the cool night air. He felt the moon play silver over his pale skin and smiled a little. The greeting of an old friend, it seemed.

He felt a tug, in that hollow place in his chest where Agatha seemed to leave empty when she wasn’t nearby, but he pushed it aside.

No regrets. No self-pity. He did this because…well, because he cared. He cared for her above all things, even himself.

If this was the only way to protect her. To leave into the night. To find the Harkers and tear them apart until their entire organisation was naught but dust…

So be it.

Dracula exhaled a cool breath of night air and settled the heavy mantle of resolve over his bones.

So be it.

He tipped forward, leaping out of the window, headed for the night and every Harker he could find.

He could do this much for her, at least. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to feature some romantic lines in this and Dracula trying to do the right thing and screwing it up, as per usual. 
> 
> I haven't yet written the next chapter so the update may not happen on Friday. We'll see what the muses do for me. I think I have an idea but these two are DIFFICULT to write into some sort of functioning relationship. It's going to take a lot of creativity to keep it sort of in character and also, you know, readable. 
> 
> Any thoughts and feelings y'all have, feel free to throw them at me. It may trigger some sort of creative process. 
> 
> May the odds ever be in my favour.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ha haaaaa, this thing is growing arms and legs. What happened to my short little fifteen chapter story???
> 
> Apparently not!
> 
> This starts off super down but it gets better, I promise.

**Chapter 15 – Her…**

**_Agatha…_ **

Agatha had known the moment he'd left.

Of course she had.

She had been halfway up the stairs, intent on following him, continuing their conversation, and she had realised...he was no longer in the house.

Not simply no longer in the house but no longer on the property. Rapidly receding from the sphere of her influence in which she had grown accustomed to him being. 

Instinct had _screamed_ at her. Need bellowing through her skull, clawing at her lungs, possessiveness burning like acid in her gut. Folding her in half then and there between one step and the next. Her claws had white knuckled on the antique banister around the stairs. Her vision hazed to white around the edges and her blood pounding in her head with the craven desire to _go get him_.

She hadn't moved.

Had locked every limb in place. Refused to budge.

If he wanted to leave then let him. She had offered him everything he had thought he had wanted and he had turned his nose up. She thought that the very definition of his problem. If he didn't want her on her terms then he obviously didn't want her at all and no screeching voice low in her hindbrain was going to destroy her self-worth, thank you very much.

This was what she had wanted after all. To be free of him. She had known that she would be unable to kill him. It took everything in her to remain in place whilst he ran as the coward she had known him to be. Running off towards his own foolish demise rather than trust that she was actually competent at her bloody job. She had an iron will but even she had limits. 

So it was ideal.

He would leave. Get himself killed trying to take down the Harkers and she'd be free of him. Finally. Not even his ghost to haunt her anymore. She'd finally be out from under his shadow.

Ideal, really.

She knew that. Academically, she knew that. Intellectually, it was a no brainer. Everything rational spoke toward it being Darwinism at its finest.

Dracula was going to go off, get lost in an environment that he was no longer suited to and promptly get himself mown into mince by a fifty calibre.

Convincing any organ in her other than her brain of that...took longer.

Hellboy found her a half hour later. Still bent near double and halfway up the stairs. His concern had washed over her, needling, an irritant. Her body hadn't wanted him. It had wanted another. Hadn't wanted his sulphurous presence at her side but a deeper, richer scent of iron, coffee and male. Her skin had wanted a cooler touch than the warm stone fingers that had supported her upright and her ears had begged for a mellower accent than Hellboy's own drawl.

It would pass.

That was what she had told Hellboy. Dracula was gone and the bond was tearing itself apart. It was uncomfortable but it would pass. She had survived worse. All things came to an end. Even pain. It would pass.

It would.

Probably.

**_Month One…_ **

"Dracula again."

Agatha jolted to a sudden halt upon entry to the break room and the two agents there, in their casuals of combat trousers and BPRD issue tee shirts, froze at the sight of her.

"Sorry, ma'am." The younger blurted.

"What for? The truth?" Agatha's tone was arch and she moved towards the coffee machine, fully expecting them to dive out of her way.

They did.

It was petty of her to take small pleasure in their mad scramble out of the break room to avoid her non-existent wrath, but it meant she could watch the television in peace. 

Agatha poured herself a cup of coffee, left it black, a Turkish blend, and reached up to turn the volume up on the television.

She leaned back against the sink, sipping her drink, and watched the news.

Texas was on fire.

Well, Houston certainly.

What had started as a suspected chemical spill in an industrial complex had somehow grown arms and legs and turned into a blaze that had engulfed what seemed like half the city. Local officials were baffled as to how the fire had spread to so far and so quickly but the flames refused to be doused. 

The complex, owned by Heraldry Inc, a subsidiary of the Harkers, had been utterly destroyed. Costing the company hundreds of millions in property damage and loss of product. This was nothing to speak of the potential losses in the stock market as this was yet another blow to Heraldry Inc who seemed to have been plagued by bad luck since the start of last month.

Images of Houston engulfed in darkness and painted in an eerie orange light from the pervasive flames dominated the newscast. It was supposed to be the middle of the day but the smoke had blotted the sun from the sky. It had been midnight for days in the city and Agatha wondered idly if that had been Dracula's intent the whole time.

He didn't like fire but he did do his best work in the dark.

"I see your boyfriend is still helping us out."

Agatha went completely still when Broom entered the room, already mid conversation with her, and made straight for the coffee.

"Love this stuff. You really need to stop spoiling the worker bees though, I cannot keep them to the caffeine standards to which you have let them become accustomed." Broom saluted her with his own mug and lounged casually beside her at the cabinets of the kitchenette.

"Sounds like a you problem." Agatha murmured finally.

"She speaks!" Broom threw up one hand and Agatha refused to even give him the benefit of her side eye. "In all seriousness, for a loose canon, he's done more in a month to upset the balance of power than we have been able to in years. The Harkers are _haemorrhaging_ money in every direction. Satellite offices are being closed down and everything."

"Hmm." Agatha drank more coffee.

The news had moved onto the next segment. More in Texas and the States it would seem. Unusual animal activity. Mass migration of wolves.

Subtle.

"How is he getting the information?" Broom turned to Agatha suddenly. "It wasn't that we were _unaware_ of the Harkers and their money laundering schemes, amongst other ventures, but we had other things on our plate to deal with. Even with them now being our top priority, he's always two steps ahead of us."

"He's drinking it by the gallon, of course." Agatha rolled her eyes. "The man is a glutton for carnage and ever has been. They hurt him so he's hurting them. This is revenge. Pure and simple."

"We've been keeping our ear to the ground as per your suggestion. Necromancy division has been on the lookout for the newly risen in the wake of every single one of his...projects." Broom continued conversationally. _Obnoxiously._ "Particularly, ah, young females."

"And? Anyone I need to be aware of?" There was no guarantee at all that Dracula's victims would rise as a fully-fledged concubi.

In fact, they had never figured out what it was that had some people Rise as concubi werewolf or demon and others come back as revenants, zombies, ghouls or any other lower form of undead. The lower forms were easy enough for standard BPRD agents to deal with. When the mental influence of a succubus or incubus came into play however...one didn't send the lamb to do the lion's work.

"Nope."

Agatha blinked, turning to look at Broom properly for the first time.

"None? At all?"

"None. I had them double and triple check as per your request but, whoever he's feeding on, he's not leaving enough of them left to come back as anything more than a greasy stain. His diet must consist primarily of Harkers right now." Broom waved at the carnage being recapped on the screen.

"It won't last." Agatha turned back to her coffee as if she might find some peace in the bottom of the mug. "Keep them on it."

"Of course, ma'am." Broom drawled.

"You _asked_ for my opinion on him." Agatha reminded him sharply, pupils flashing briefly gold in a danger Broom succinctly ignored.

"Yes, because I thought it was informed."

"It is." Agatha scowled at him when he shoved off the cabinets, moving for the door.

"Well, you haven't been right about him since he waded to shore from the _Demeter."_ Broom turned back with a smirk for his parting shot.

"One wonders, if you've been wrong about his intentions towards the Harkers, what other motivations of his you could be mistaken over?"

Broom left before Agatha could throw her coffee mug at him.

Just as well.

It was expensive sodding coffee.

**_Month Two…_ **

The assertion that Agatha was mistaken about Dracula, his motivations and anything else that she may have thought about him, was a notion that dogged her.

Perhaps it was the lack of sleep that kept the persistent niggle in the back of her head. Then again, her insomnia was his fault too. The bond had yet to break apart into nothing. It sat there, sullen from neglect, in the back of her brain and refused to quietly die.

The bond stretched out of her head and into the ether. Reaching out towards Dracula, she surmised, though she did not care to attempt to narrow the field. She had little doubt that if she were to follow it, she would find him with little difficulty. She was equally as certain that if _she_ could feel that, then so could Dracula. He had not come to find her, so she did not feel the pressing need to track him down.

Not at all.

Agatha scrubbed a hand over her face and admitted to herself that she probably _shouldn’t_ be driving. Let alone at the speed she was travelling at.

Still, what was the point in the blue flashing lights and the siren if you never got to use them?

The tyres of the four by four squealed as she applied the brakes perhaps a shade too late. She managed to avoid the gate of the graveyard -just- and shut off the engine before she truly became a danger to herself and others.

The lack of sleep wasn’t a problem for her. Never had been. She had never slept well.

She didn’t know what the hell anyone was talking about and she was rather certain that she could, in fact, live off coffee alone if she so bloody pleased.

“Report.”

The female agent flinched at Agatha’s approach despite seeing her coming and the males actively scattered. They retreated several metres, hands on their weapons but Agatha did little more than level a sullen glowing glare at them.

“Ah, ma’am, Hellboy is fine. Little banged up, but the medics are with him now.” The female agent, Goodall, drew herself up to her full height when her superior officers still wanted to give Agatha plenty of playroom. “The call for the case was a ruse, a plant placed by Harker agents from what we can tell. They seemed intent on capturing Hellboy but…the trap was turned back on them.”

“Hmm?” Agatha looked up from accepting a steaming coffee cup that a junior agent _very carefully_ approached her with.

“We think that- -Dracula and his team were here.” Goodall licked her lips nervously and braved continuing when Agatha went entirely still but focussed her full attention on the human. “It was two battalions of Harker soldiers, forty troops all told, Hellboy’s statement supports that it was Dracula and his companions that…killed everyone.”

Agatha disappeared.

Goodall flinched bodily, the sensation of the elder female ghosting around her at a speed too fast for her senses to track made her nauseous. Either that or it was the relief of not having one of her team eaten. She let loose a slow and relieved breath and tried to force her heart rate to settle.

Good grief, that woman was terrifying.

In the graveyard, Agatha slithered to a halt and startled a screech from one of the medics.

“Get him out of here if he cannot look at me!” Agatha all but roared and the medic was hurried away by another agent with a slightly sturdier constitution.

“Jeeeeeezz- -!” Hellboy worked down his own flinch when Agatha simply _materialised_ in front of him. He levelled an orange glare at her but she was already up in his face.

“Are you hurt? Injured at all? Are they all dead?”

“Agatha- -Agatha!” Hellboy caught her hand with his stone limb before she could touch his flesh. He suspected that would not end well for him if she did. “I’m fine. They never got anywhere near me. Hell. I didn’t even get a look in. Harkers got me with a dart. Just one. Not enough to knock me out but enough to make me have a sit for a while.”

Agatha’s glowing golden pupils tracked over him. They were always gold these days. Always blown. She was always on the prowl. She wasn’t eating.

“Goodall said that…” Agatha trailed off, letting her hand drop. She accepted the evidence bag containing a familiar looking pink tufted dart inside. “He was here.”

“Yeah. I was kinda hazy, but Drac was here. Him and the minotaur? Lotta wolves. A _lot_ of wolves and some sort of demon dog.”

“The Chupacabra.” Agatha nodded slowly, she could see a bead of Hellboy’s blood on the tip of the dart in the evidence bag. She rolled her head on her neck to try and settle herself when her fangs ached to extend and… _tear something_.

“Yeah. They’re working together. The Harkers turned up and then the Drac Pack and…this.” Hellboy waved vaguely about himself.

Agatha turned to look and it hit her then. The iron heavy weight of the blood in the air. The copper scent was so thick she could taste it. Her mouth worked a moment, she realised she was muscling down a gag. Dead blood was as disgusting to her now as it had been when she was a human after all.

Bodies were strewn everywhere. Each one of them wearing familiar all black fatigues carrying heavy calibre weapons and those sleek silvery tranquiliser guns. Most of the bodies were twisted horribly. Either wrenched back on themselves by tremendous strength or crumpled where they had been tossed like dolls into the tombstones and crypts populating the graveyard. Those that had not been crumpled had been torn apart.

Paw prints were everywhere. The musk scent of wolves rife in the air under all the blood. Viscera, bone splinters and shreds of meat tangled in the remains of combat webbing was all that remained of many of the Harker soldiers.

They were dead. Every single one.

No information for the BPRD.

“He stayed, you know.”

Agatha twisted to look at Hellboy.

“I was looped, but he stayed with me until the lights and sirens showed up.” Hellboy nodded to the BPRD agents attempting cataloguing and clean up in the bloody swamp the graveyard had been turned into. “Sat and chatted a bit.”

“ _Chatted_?” Agatha raised an eyebrow. Dracula making small talk was…hard to imagine. Her mouth worked for a moment, trying to swallow down the question but it came unbidden anyway.

“What did he say?”

Hellboy shifted uncomfortably, lifting his red hand to scrub at the back of his neck and pull at the tail of his black hair. His mouth twisted, orange eyes looking anywhere but at her.

“I expect it to be about me and uncomplimentary.” Agatha’s voice was flat. “Out with it.”

“He said…you need to eat someone.”

Agatha stiffened as if she had been tased.

Hellboy cleared his throat, not daring to look at her. It was the only way he could deal with the terror she was levelling at him. It wasn’t so bad for the women on the team, Agatha naturally predated on males, but she could easily affect even Hellboy if she was vexed enough.

Which she was.

“He said that Abe and Elisa would be fine. He, ah, he could handle that.” Hellboy swallowed hard.

“Could he now.” Agatha’s voice was very quiet.

“It’s what he said.” Hellboy kept his gaze fastened on the ground and daren’t look at her.

She had practically raised him, he was not _afraid_ of her, but it was kind of like not being afraid of a tiger. You knew if you did the right things then the tiger _probably_ wasn’t going to chew your head off. So long as it wasn’t hungry or pissed off.

Agatha, however, was both hungry and pissed off and was on month two of the same.

At the moment, it was only Broom and Agatha’s own reputation for iron control that had saved her from a more…pointed intervention than Dracula’s message through Hellboy. Literally any other agent exhibiting such instability would have been packed off on mandatory leave with a schedule of psyche appointments.

That had not happened yet with Agatha because…well, Hellboy liked to think it was because she was well respected and had earned enough respect to be given the benefit of the doubt but the facts were that daily terror was awful for team morale. Probably the only reason Agatha was still prowling about free amongst them was because nobody was quite brave enough to suggest that she sit her ass down and sort herself out.

Nobody except Dracula and even he had dropped the message and beat feet before she could turn up to hear it.

“Hmm.” Agatha hummed deep in her throat and Hellboy chanced a look up at her.

She was looking dispassionately about the graveyard at the mess left in Dracula’s wake. Her mouth twisted as if in a wry smile and she shook her head.

“It’s always the mess with him.” Her voice was soft.

For the first time in weeks, not a barked command or a snarl to keep their distance. Agatha looked about herself, eyes tracking over the carnage and the agents moving around cataloguing everything for the follow up investigation. Her gaze was…passive. She wasn’t noting the weak spots in her fellow agents. Her shoulders weren’t hunched up close to her ears as if she was attempting to keep herself from pouncing on the nearest likely meal. She seemed…relaxed.

Marginally.

“You’re truly alright?” Agatha turned back to him. Her eyes still shone gold, but her pupils had contracted to smaller than freshly minted coins at least.

“Yeah. I’m fine. Drac saw to that.” Hellboy shrugged, offering her a lopsided smile.

“Good.” Agatha nodded and then turned when Goodall cautiously approached her again. “Everything in hand?”

“Ah, yes ma’am. We’ve coordinated with local authorities. They’re organising a cordon to keep the press and the public out until we’ve cleaned house. We’ve nearly finished documenting the scene and then we can start moving the bodies out. Hellboy will be sent home with a couple of agents. Medics say he’s fine but should be monitored for the next twenty-four.”

“Very well. I’ll ride with him.”

“Uh…yes, ma’am.” Goodall nodded sharply and then turned away to make sure everything kept going as smoothly as it had been until Agatha had arrived.

Agatha herself turned around, her long coat billowing around her calves, and stepped up onto the tomb to sit beside Hellboy on the marble casket. She let loose a slow sigh.

“You okay, big sis?” Hellboy looked at her.

“Yes. I’m fine.”

Big fat lie, Hellboy thought, but he had the grace not to call her on it.

“You not gonna drive home yourself? No need to hang around and wait for me.”

“Really shouldn’t be driving.” Agatha tilted then, resting her cheek against the solid muscle of one of Hellboy’s massive shoulders. “I’m fucking exhausted.”

Hellboy gusted a relieved laugh and nodded.

“Yeah. Probably because you aren’t sleeping.”

“His fault.”

“I know.” Hellboy shifted so she could loop her hands around his bicep, sharing his warmth and leaning more heavily against him than she could a mere mortal. “If it helps, he looks like hammered shit too.”

“Not really.” Agatha murmured quietly.

“Yeah. I figured.” Hellboy kept his voice as low and as soothing as he could. “Kinda weird that he turned up here, don’t you think? Last I heard they were in Russia.”

“He came for you.” Agatha sighed.

“Huh?”

“Because you’re important to me. He came to protect you. For me.” Her voice was hollow and Hellboy thought she might be, incredibly, close to crying. He tensed, unsure what to do about that because that sure as hell seemed like a sign of the end times to him.

“Oh.” Hellboy cleared his throat. “He didn’t seem like the type.”

“He’s not.” Agatha turned her face into Hellboy’s shoulder, resting her forehead against the solid bulk of him. “He’s really not. I don’t understand.”

“Love sucks, huh.” Hellboy grunted then tensed when he realised what he had said.

Agatha was silent for so long that he thought he had gotten away with it. That she had either missed it or had just ignored him. Nobody was more surprised than he at her admission.

“Yes.” She nodded against him. “Yes it does.”

**_Month Three…_ **

“You look better.”

Agatha glanced over at Elisa when she strode into the office, hands already full flow with speech.

“Thank you.” Agatha tapped a few more keys on her report and then saved the document. She sat back in her chair and waved Elisa to take the one opposite her desk.

“You should have come to us sooner. We’d never let you starve.” Elisa said as she dropped into the chair, artfully arranging herself there.

Elisa’s eyes were kind but her smile was tired. Agatha had kept her and Abe up most of the night after all. Two immortals they might be, Abe was a creature of no small power, but Agatha had been _ravenous_.

She could last without food. She could go for longer than any human without water. She could even hold her breath for well over an hour if she was in need of it…some things she could not do without, however. She had been running on fumes by the time Dracula had come back to Britain to speak to Hellboy and pass his message on.

It wasn’t that she _hadn’t_ been hungry. She’d been starved. Everyone had looked delicious by that night on the graveyard but she had been categorically incapable of feeding on any of them.

Not that she would have been unable to pounce on them, bring them down and tear into them, just that it had seemed so repellent. She had thought it was because the bond had been sickening her as it stretched to breaking point but…that was only half true.

She hadn’t _wanted_ to eat anyone else.

It would have felt like a betrayal.

Any energy she might have taken from anyone, no matter how she plied herself to the hunt and how willing they might have been, would have soured on her tongue. It would have been wretched, she had known that in her bones, because she wasn’t sharing it with Dracula.

He had known that. He had known that probably because he felt the same on his end of the bond (which was still very much alive and well in the back of her mind) and that thought worried her more than she had expected it would.

Was he starving too? Was he struggling as she was? She’d been under the impression that incubi could survive quite well on a diet of blood alone. What if that was not the case?

She’d tell him to feed on someone else. Someone closer to him. Though she had no way of reaching him. He had last been sighted somewhere in the interior of China, on the hunt for a Harker lab of unparalleled size and depravity, but that had been rumour right up until the place had blown sky high.

Now he was in the wind again.

“Hey, he’s still alive. Venezuela just checked in. Turns out their trip down to the Red Court went better than expected. Some big bad incubus had already been there and knocked the fight out of them before our guys arrived.”

Agatha raised an eyebrow.

“Some quick off the mark agent managed to catch a photo of brute in question.” Elisa reached into her pocket and produced a printed photograph.

Agatha didn’t reach out to take it, frozen in her chair as she was, but her eyes darted down to the black and white image when it spilled over her keyboard to slide to a halt in front of her. She blinked, inhaling sharply, seeing him for the first time in months.

He looked…tired.

Dracula had obviously been caught in the act of disappearing into the greenery of the South American jungle. Huge leaves framed him, casting dappled shadows across his pale skin, but he had turned, shoulders twisting and eyes zeroing in on the camera. He had looked right down the lens as his image was captured and Agatha snorted, of course he had.

Always the attention whore.

The faintest smirk pulled at his mouth. He was dressed simply in dark clothes. Dark shirt at least. He wore elaborate bead necklaces piled around his neck, thick golden arm cuffs around the bulk of his biceps, no doubt stolen from the Vampire aristocracy of the Red Court. A crown of obsidian shards and gold circlets was canted on his head at a rakish angle.

“Prince of Darkness indeed.” Agatha pushed the photograph back towards Elisa.

“You keep it. We have another for the official file.” Elisa winked at Agatha and refused to take the photograph. “He’s doing pretty well. From what we can tell, he’s devastated the Harkers in the last couple of months. They haven’t made any noise at all since China. They seem to be in full retreat.”

“Which means they will be fortifying. Harder to finish off.” Agatha raised an eyebrow at Elisa.

She didn’t mention the fear that clawed at her of a night. The worry every morning when she woke, reaching for the bond in the back of her mind in spite of herself. The relief that coursed through her every time she found it still there and intact. He had survived another night.

She’d be disgusted with herself if she wasn’t so damn pleased that he was still roaming about out there. Happening to people.

Even if he wasn’t near her. At least he was still alive.

“Reports say that he’s adapting pretty well to the ‘new world’.” Elisa took the time to scrunch her fingers in quotation marks amidst her other Sign. “Spotted with a cell phone and everything. Maybe he has an Instagram account you can follow.”

“Is there a _reason_ you’re here or…?” Agatha lifted her hand, patience done.

She was acutely aware that her love life (or lack thereof) was the subject of much public discussion. She had not been unaware of the clandestine plans that had been in the making before she had managed to feed from Abe and Elisa.

Agatha did not begrudge her superiors the need to look out for the wellbeing of the BPRD at large. She knew that she had been on the verge of losing control entirely. There is only so long starvation can be endured before instinct takes over. Particularly considering that Agatha tended to work with what anyone else would view as an All You Can Eat buffet. If she had snapped, there would have been few agents fast enough, strong enough or just… _enough_ to hope to stop her.

“I mostly came to heckle.” Elisa admitted easily. “But also to make sure that you are recovering. You had us worried.”

“…I know.” Agatha admitted after a long moment. She was still, even after decades of practice, not used to people worrying for her. “I really am getting better. You and Abraham have helped immensely.”

“Not like it’s been a trial for us, Agatha. You’re always welcome to come play with us.”

Agatha smirked a little at that but decided not to take it literally. She had been feeding from Elisa and Abe as much as she knew they could withstand. They had no idea the scope of Agatha’s appetite and she wasn’t about to tell them either.

She was comparatively well fed. That was all that mattered. She could sleep again and was no longer a danger to herself and others. Normalcy was coming back to her. Slowly.

“Of course,” Elisa continued blithely, “the question now becomes, when are you going to collect his dumb ass?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Well, he’s obviously a bit dim. Bickering with the Harkers when he could be here playing house spouse with you. What if he gets stuck up a tree or something?”

Agatha barked a sudden laugh and Elisa’s startled grin made Agatha realise how long it had been since she had actually laughed.

How utterly ridiculous to have been so ruined by a mere _man_.

“I’m not going to go and get him.” Agatha shook her head, sobering after a moment. “He made his choice. He didn’t believe I could keep up with him. So he left.”

“You think that’s it?”

“I know that’s it.” Agatha shrugged.

“Yeah, like you _knew_ that he was going to leave a trail of new succubi in his wake for you to deal with. Which you have decidedly not been doing. Just FYI.” Elisa pressed her lips together and shrugged her shoulders expansively.

“I take it you have another theory?”

“Yeah, you’re Head Bitch in Charge.”

“Charming.” Agatha drawled.

“What I mean is…he’s never met anyone like you. You were sassy, scrappy and hungry when you met him and that was _before_ you got your big girl sex demon underpants. He goes to sleep for a few decades, wakes in a whole new world and then -BAM- there you are. Fully fledged, glorious and utterly out of his league. No surprise to me that he went off to level up.”

“Level up?” Agatha tilted her head, heaving a long suffering sigh. “Really?”

“You were going to keep him as a pet. You were so busy shoving your feminist agenda down his throat -which you know I love and support but take a breath, Agatha- being determined not to be a stay at home wife that you forgot that he had no desire to be kept either. He kind of redefines type A and you wanted to keep his balls in your pocket.”

“My having independence does nothing to emasculate him.” Agatha rubbed at her temples. She recognised that Elisa was a product of nineteen fifties America but Agatha had been _Catholic_.

Drop the conditioning already.

“No. Independence doesn’t. Dictating his every action, which is what you wanted to do, would. Maybe he just wanted to prove that he could be your equal. This new you in this new world he came back to.”

Agatha opened her mouth to argue further but Elisa stood up and waved her off.

“Then again, you know him better than anyone. Maybe change terrorises him.”

Agatha clipped her teeth together and remained silent as Elisa headed for the door. She waved when her friend departed but said nothing more.

She had much to think about.

After all, she was growing used to the idea that she had been quite thoroughly wrong about Dracula.

At least, Dracula in this century.

She glanced down at the photograph again.

Dark eyes, debonair smirk and that crown perched ridiculously on his head.

He was no Prince Charming, that was for certain.

Then again, Prince Charming had never been Agatha’s type.

God _damnit_.

**_Month Five…_ **

Agatha would later be unable to tell when she had become so attuned to the bond.

It had never faded. Not really. She had given up on trying to ignore it. It was always there, a tether in her head. Stretching out of her and away into the void between herself and Dracula. It was a string connecting them, wafting in the space between them, billowing in the wind as it were.

She didn’t recall consciously deciding to find out what would happen if she were to grip that string in her mind and…tug.

She had been meditating. Carving out some meagre peace for herself amongst the hectic monotony of life as a cog in the BPRD machine. Settling herself for the night, calming her mind before bedding down in the early hours.

The bond was there. Of course. Always there. It ran like a highway through her mind. Out of the confines of her own consciousness and…beyond.

Agatha had been travelling that road before she had thought better of it.

At first, she had thought herself wandering without a map. No matter how far she reached out, she never seemed to get any closer to what, and who, she knew was on the other end.

That hadn’t stopped her trying again the next night. Nor the next. Nor even the one after that.

She stumbled into his mind one night quite by accident with all the grace of someone finding out there was one more step in that staircase than originally thought.

_Agatha?_

She felt his surprise splash over her like a bucket of cold water. He had been so startled that she had felt the echo of him actually physically jumping in surprise. Whirling on his heels and expecting to see her standing right behind him.

She had laughed so hard that she had broken the connection.

She regretted nothing.

**_Month Ten…_ **

It was a game now.

Agatha was humming quietly to herself, writing another bloody report, with half a mind and prodding at Dracula with the other half.

He was as irritated with her as he was delighted. She could feel all of it.

He was attempting to rest, wherever he was it was night and he had been a busy boy. He was trying to sleep but her consciousness yanked on him like a cat savaging a string. He curled in on himself, tucking his mind away from her. Like he was trying to keep her from finding anything on which to catch her claws and pull. He was, of course, unsuccessful. When Agatha found no scraps or stray thoughts to tug on, she settled for the mental equivalent of body checking him.

He grunted, she could feel it in her own throat when he did it.

She grinned.

 _Awake._ He projected to her.

Words were difficult to send this far apart. Wherever he was, she suspected the spinning molten core of the planet was between them and that much heavy metal always affected such magics poorly.

Sometimes the connection was better. If they were separated by a mere continent or so and they could exchange complete sentences, pictures and even entire scenes. She had caught flashes of what he was seeing at times.

Such things usually devolved into an argument at some point or another because _what the hell was he thinking_?! Said arguments usually were deferred until after the fact because even Agatha wasn’t going to argue with him when he was literally elbow deep in a monster of some tentacled variety and fighting for his life.

Those instances were rare. Usually he was further away from the action. Planning, strategizing or charming allies to fight for his cause. She was surprised by the majority of other personalities she picked up surrounding his. It seemed that she could sense through his senses when they were close enough or she was focussing hard enough.

She had been surprised, at first. He appeared to have _friends_. Allies in the least. He was always surrounded by three personalities that were familiar to her. N’Dama’s towering placidity in the face of anything, Latin’s feral amusement and the Chupacabra that just… _was_.

Though there were others that appeared and disappeared from his sphere of influence. He had organised a veritable army in his time away and appeared to immensely enjoy pointing them at the Harkers.

He seemed to thrive on the purpose.

 _Sorry_. Agatha sent back to him when she felt his query at her lack of response.

 _Lie_. He called her on it and she chuckled to herself. Well, that was true.

 _Tired_?

The response he gave her was not a word but rather a feeling. One of wry amusement that she would ask such a thing when she had spent the last ten minutes keeping him awake and refusing to let him rest because _she_ was bored of paperwork.

Agatha was not on suspension, per say, but the cabal that funded the BPRD were certainly keeping an eye on her and limiting the time that she was out in the field. She was kept on a comparatively short leash. Such a thing that was not aided by Dracula’s occasional missives to the head office that the BPRD had been compromised _again_ because he had located another turncoat in their midst.

Only three, including the one that had sold her out to the Harkers in the first time, but it had become abundantly clear that she was still on their radar. Her location had been passed to the Harkers in each instance and she’d taken to habitually moving Safehouses every fortnight or so.

It didn’t bother Agatha too much. Modern technology meant that her research was much more portable than the library she had built beneath the Convent a century ago. Besides, she had never really been attached to things. Moving regularly wasn’t much of a bother when you could live out of a duffle.

It bothered Dracula.

It bothered him a lot.

The feeling he sent her next was their shorthand for asking if she had relocated this week.

 _YES._ She spelled it out for him and felt his smile in response.

He was pleased that she was taking the Harker threat seriously and that bled through their connection. Beneath that she could sense his disquiet that she was still such a target. His impatience with the time his plans took and his desire to be closer to her.

The first time she’d come across the last through their bond she _may_ have yelled at him a bit.

He had been the one to leave after all.

Still, Agatha had been slowly coming around to the idea that Elisa had been onto something.

Had she kept Dracula under her supervision as she had intended, locked into the BPRD head office with her, she had little doubt that he’d have gone insane with the time it took for such bureaucracy to get anything _done_.

Dracula might be a warlord from the wrong century, learning how to operate a smart phone at the same time as he was figuring out how automatic weapons worked but he was _fast_. Moving without permission from governments, taking local egos into consideration or worrying about such paltry things as borders and the status quo meant that he and his forces had demolished much of the Harker conglomerate in a matter of months. An operation of similar scale, carried out by the BPRD could easily have taken decades and not been half as effective.

The downsides to working within the law, she surmised.

She was not comfortable that he had left the way he had. The bond, the withdrawal from him, the suffering she’d put herself through because she was just bloody stubborn…it hadn’t been a cakewalk.

He had needed to do it though.

She recognised that at least. He’d have been an absolute basket case waiting for anything to happen at her pace. The Harkers would have been a very real and present danger to her as well as so many others and he wouldn’t have seen the point of the BPRD’s walk softly with a big stick approach.

Dracula had made it abundantly clear that he cared dick all for the soft approach and preferred plastic explosives rigged to barrels of accelerant if at all given the opportunity.

Also grenade launchers.

The boy in him still loved his toys.

Agatha was never sure what to reply to his pining for her with. She had tried ignoring it, expecting him to withdraw but he never had. He had continued to show such a feeling to her. Going so far as to use the words when they had a good enough connection.

He _missed_ her.

It had taken Agatha much longer to admit to even the sliver of a similar feeling within her.

Agatha jolted when she felt something like… _!!!_ from him.

She paused in her typing, wondering what he was reacting and felt the heat crawl up her neck when she realised she had thought that last…’aloud’. Agatha groaned, knowing what was coming even before his tired self summoned the effort to send a whole word to her.

 _Really_? He sounded _unbearably_ smug.

 _No_. She replied.

 _Lie_. He was grinning again.

Agatha sighed. Well. No point in lying. It had come from her own head after all.

_Yes._

He wallowed in his smugness for a moment. Pleased with himself. It would have been annoying but she could sense his genuine happiness and contentment under it all. The relief that she was _genuine_ in her reciprocation.

She had not realised until that moment how much it had hurt him to know that he was head long in love with her and that she hadn’t actually even liked him all that much.

Then again. She hadn’t really known him then.

Agatha was going to need time to adjust to this new naked status quo between them but she did not cut the connection. She remained precisely where she was. Half in his mind and half in her own.

She let the peaceful rhythm of her typing filter through the connection. Let him feel the drone of steady cut and dry thoughts about budgeting reports, creative accounting and money laundering that went into running an organisation like the BPRD.

Calm settled over him and she gentled him to sleep.

It was only after she had done it that she realised that she was in too deep.

She… _cared_ about him.

**_Month Sixteen…_ **

“Jeez, big sis, what’s wrong with you?”

“Hmm?” Agatha looked up from the report in her hand and spun on her heels.

Hellboy had propped himself in the doorway, leaning one massive shoulder on the frame and had apparently been there for some time without her even noticing.

“You’re wearing a hole in the carpet.” Hellboy nodded to her bare feet on the carpet in question and Agatha glanced down.

There was, indeed, something of a worn path in a circuit around her desk. She huffed out a breath and shook it off.

“Nothing’s wrong. I’m fine.”

“Uh…huh.” Hellboy pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes.

Agatha glared at him.

No effect.

“Wanna talk about it?” He pushed off the doorframe and into the room.

“Not particularly.” Agatha whirled away from him, heading back to her desk and forcing herself to _sit_.

“So, there is an ‘it’?” Hellboy grinned at her, dropping down onto the low couch that took up one wall of her office.

She growled at him.

He ignored her.

“Seriously, you’ve been like a long tailed cat in a rocking chair factory all week. What’s got your britches in a bunch?”

“He’s gone quiet.” Agatha admitted after a moment.

“Well, California was a big op for them. Locals are still cleaning up and it was _weeks_ ago.”

Hellboy’s brows rose as he even thought about it. That had been some crazy shit and he doubted anyone in their crew would have had the sanctions or the _cajones_ to pull off such a batshit idea.

Information was a little sketchy due to digital surveillance having been knocked out by a very stolen and very illegal Electromagnetic Pulse Device but the BPRD had people in most departments and they’d looked the old fashioned way.

From what they had been able to tell, Dracula had tracked the Harkers’ Headquarters back to Silicone Valley in California and had promptly gathered everything he had and lain siege.

Giants.

The crazy bastard had not only _found_ giants but had convinced them that the best idea ever was to come with him to California and kill a bunch of blackhats with H’s on their lapels. The giants had literally torn the building apart and had let what had to have been _thousands_ of wolves pour in through the opening.

Zoologists and animal behaviourists had been doing their nuts for the last year because the wolf population of the _planet_ appeared to be on the move. They’d had no idea how or why or where they had been heading but the answer had turned out to be a nameless building in California.

Hellboy might have queried the wisdom of wolves against automatic weapons but he’d forgotten. People always forgot.

Humans don’t have claws. They don’t really have teeth to speak of. Can’t see in the dark, hear worth a shit or smell their own farts half the time. All they have going for them is their tools, big brains and overactive imaginations.

Big brains that turn into gibbering mush when confronted with an honest to god _wolf._ Never mind over two thousand of them.

In the pitch dark, no lights, nothing digital working, equipment fried, it hadn’t gone so well for the Harkers.

Whoever hadn’t been killed by wolves had likely been eaten by giants. It had happened _fast_. By the time local authorities had scrambled to arrive, all they had found was a _lot_ of blood, plenty of empty cages in what looked to be a highly illegal private detainment and research facility and a lot of fucking pawprints.

Also giant footprints but that hadn’t made it into the news.

“No. Here.” Agatha interrupted Hellboy’s musings and tapped her temple. She shook her head. “He’s been quiet since California.”

“You can…you can hear him?”

Agatha, chewing on her lip and not really paying attention to him, nodded.

“How long’s that been going on?”

“Nearly a year?” Agatha shrugged.

“You didn’t tell us.” Hellboy accused and Agatha shrugged, too absorbed in her own drama to realise how worried everyone had been about her.

They had known that she was doing better than she had been but that kind of thing was relative with Agatha. She was so self contained that she could have been a half a breath from a complete mental breakdown and she’d never have given even a hint of it before she started foaming at the mouth and requiring a tailor for a jacket with fasteners on the back.

“You been talking to him?” Hellboy tried again.

“Sometimes.” Agatha glanced at him. “The connection is not always the best. Like…a bad telephone line. Then it’s just feelings mostly. Ghosts of sensation.”

Hellboy decided not to leap to his feet and pump his fist in the air when Agatha mentioned _feelings_ with regards to Dracula. She had been quiet on all fronts when it came to the most famous vampire but Hellboy had been quietly rooting for them.

“Oh.” He aimed for casual. “You can still…sense him though? Right? Like he’s not hurt or nothing?”

“I don’t know if he can hide that from me. He is concealing something but that is hardly unusual. He has never wanted me to know where he was.”

Probably rightly guessing that Agatha would beat feet to that location before she thought otherwise, Hellboy thought to himself. Drac was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a complete idiot. Even if he had disappeared into the night rather than stay with Agatha which Hellboy didn’t even pretend to understand.

“Maybe he’s still mopping up what’s left of the Harkers.” Hellboy offered after a moment.

“We’ve taken over.” Agatha shook her head in the negative, stewing on it. “Frozen their assets, imposed sanctions, locked them down. The download from their blacksite furnished us with all the information we needed in order to act.”

“He’ll turn up.” Hellboy tried to be comforting. Not a familiar role to him. “I mean, in the least, he’s got all those wolves to…”

Agatha shot suddenly to her feet, inhaling sharply. She was still a moment, her breath caught in her chest and she blinked rapidly.

“I have to go.” She lunged for the door.

“Ag- -Agatha!” Hellboy shouted after her when she hurled open the door and disappeared out into the corridor. “Big sis! Your shoes!”

Hellboy snatched up her boots and ran for the door. He looked out into the corridor and saw one agent pressed back against the wall as if they had suffered a near miss with a passing freight train.

Agatha, however, was gone. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Where is she going??
> 
> What happened to Drac??
> 
> Do I even know??
> 
> PROBABLY NOT.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we have Dracula's POV. I thought it important to show some actual character growth for this idiot. 
> 
> N'Dama is played by Danai Gurira, who is Okoye from Black Panther/Marvel Cinematic Verse or Michonne from Walking Dead amongst many others. N'Dama gave me strong Okoye vibes and the general is easily my most favourite character in the MCU. If you have not seen Black Panther, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND. 
> 
> Latin is played by Natalie Portman with heavy special effects over her nose and mouth because Natalie has always given me the vibe that she would bite a bitch if pushed and that is just Latin's MO. 
> 
> Anyway, enjoy.

**Chapter 16 - …Him…**

**_Dracula…_ **

Dracula’s plans, contrary to reputation, were usually fairly simple.

He _was_ a master chess player. A chief strategist and something of a savant when it came to human nature. He was well versed in playing the game a dozen moves in advance and ripping victory from any and all comers as he saw fit.

He _could_ do complicated.

He just preferred not to.

If nothing else, the fewer moving parts there were, the easier a plan was to remember.

So, on the night that he left Agatha behind, not knowing if he would ever see her again, his plan had been simple.

Destroy the Harkers.

By any means necessary.

It was a considerable goal and he had few resources (for example, only the clothes upon his back) but he was an imaginative fellow and he usually landed on his feet. He had time in unlimited quantities, charm and a seemingly endless supply of ferocity. If he had nothing else, he could use those three things in order to gain what he needed.

First things first, he needed _allies_.

Allies and information.

Which quite naturally led him to track down the fellow inmates that had escaped the rig with them on the helicopter. Dracula only had vague memories of the trio; the minotaur, werewolf and Chupacabra, but he was confident that he could find them. London was a finite place after all and he did have a rather good sense of smell.

It took him three days.

The hardest part had been finding an immortal to catch, snack on and devour the memories in their blood. Once he had done that, he knew how to get into the Underhill sector of London where the supernaturals tended to congregate. Once there, it was a simple matter of making some noise, asking around and waiting to be told to mind his own business.

Which, unfortunately, meant being put through a wall.

Dracula winced at the grip around his throat but it was nothing compared to the brick shattering against his spine and forcing all the air from his lungs.

He gargled something that might have been a sentence but the minotaur woman wasn’t listening.

She whirled, her hold on his neck iron strong, and slammed him down onto the ground.

Well, the good news was that she hadn’t killed him.

Either that or she was working up to it.

Dracula tried to speak again. He did nothing more than attempt to pull her hand away so that he could force the air out of his throat in order to form words.

Needless to say, she may have misread his intentions.

Dracula was shoved face first through another wall and, even though his patience was wearing thin, managed to take it in good graces. She was right to be wary, after all.

When she hoisted him over her head, clearly intending to impale him upon her horns, he’d decided he’d had enough.

A quick twist, a slash of the claws to nick a tendon and he was free in an instant. Dracula whirled in the air, jinking _just_ out of the way of her horns and landed in a neat crouch between her hooves. He spun, leg kicking out and smacking one hoof into the other.

Down comes the minotaur.

“I just want to talk!” His voice was a rasp and he danced away from the bellowing bovine woman before she could get hold of him again. “I really DO just want to talk!”

“About _what_?” She snorted steam, back on her hooves in a flash and Dracula’s brows rose. She was a lot faster than he had anticipated.

“The Harkers. I need to know more about their operation.” Dracula dodged when she lunged for him again.

They were drawing quite a crowd. All manner of fey, lesser demons and creepy crawlies bustled around them in what seemed to be an underground market of sorts. There was a group of what looked to be goblins in the corner taking bets on who was going to kill who first but the vast majority of the denizens just skirted the two battling monsters and decided it was none of their affair.

“Why should I tell you anything?!” The cow woman, what was her _name_ , bellowed.

“Inquiring minds want to know?” Dracula lunged out of the way when a surprising sweep of her horns nearly fished his entire ribcage clean out of his torso. “I’m going to kill them!”

She stopped. Finally.

Stilled, looming over him, a full head and shoulders taller than he and twice as broad. She snorted a plume of steam, her dark eyes boring down into his. She narrowed those eyes, a deep sound lowing in her chest as she seemed to consider him.

“What makes you think you can?” She decided after a moment.

“I’m Count Dracula.” He shrugged.

“You were a glorified sack of meat when we first met.” She snorted.

“Feeling much better now.” Dracula grinned winsomely. “Incidentally, also why I need the information. I had none the last time. Got myself in a bit of a pickle. Much looking forward to putting the Harkers on the back foot instead. I want to hear them scream.”

“A notion I can identify with.” She straightened up, rubbing a hand over her chin and then slowly extended that same hand towards him.

Dracula took her hand, bending over her knuckles in a courtly greeting.

“A pleasure, madam. As you know, I am Count Dracula. Might I know your name?”

“N’Dama.” She rumbled, snorting in amusement at his apparent show of manners. “You are a strange streak of nonsense.”

“Quite one of the nicest things any has ever said of me.” Dracula grinned broadly. “Might we go somewhere to chat? We have much to discuss.”

N’Dama watched him for a long moment. Noting how he barely noticed the damage he had taken when she had snatched him up off the street and put him through a few walls. He dusted some mortar from the shoulder of his shirt but otherwise seemed entirely unharmed. She hadn’t even managed to bruise his neck.

Feeling better indeed.

“I will tell you what you wish to know, but it will be a trade.”

“Name your price and I’ll decide if I can pay.” Dracula cocked his head. He had expected as much. You got nothing for free.

“We come with you. We help end the Harkers.”

“We?”

“Latin, the demon dog and me. We help you kill all the Harkers.”

Dracula considered a moment.

He could not deny the tactical advantage someone of N’Dama’s size would represent and he doubted that Latin had been captured by the Harkers for her exceptional knitting skills. He knew already that a Chupacabra was no small threat.

Besides, it might be nice to have someone to talk to that wasn’t made of pure snark.

He could do without the reminder of what he was leaving behind.

“Deal.”

**_Houston…_ **

Dracula lifted his head from studying the blueprints when a crisp finger snap announced Latin’s presence. He looked up at the technically werewolf and accepted the warm mug she held out to him.

“Dinner.” She signed.

“Thank you. What vintage do I enjoy today?” Dracula scented the mug of blood.

He could taste already that it had been in the microwave to warm it but needs must. He didn’t actually require that much blood so long as he could consume much in the way of regular calories. That and he couldn’t quite _bring_ himself to feed unless he had to. Draining someone for information had become tactical rather than a matter of taste. His desire for throats had narrowed from any to one in particular and he was attempting to ignore the ramifications of same. Still, his hunger had never been quieter and it was a boon. He had not realised _how much_ time he spent focussed on keeping it quiet enough to function around until it had ceased to plague him.

“Just me.” Latin said, skirting the table to study the blueprints. “We nearly ready?”

“I believe so. I have mapped the security footage coverage and the patrols of the guards. As suspected, the blind spot is difficult to access but not impossible. Not when you can scale vertical walls at any rate.” Dracula sipped from the mug, tasting the feral memories of Latin swirling through it even after it had been refrigerated and reheated. He doubted human blood would last as well, but that was the advantage of willing donors for his dinner.

“N’Dama doesn’t like it.”

“N’Dama doesn’t like anything.” Dracula dismissed that.

Their bovine friend was currently asleep and it was the only mercy she afforded Dracula or Latin when she felt they were not moving fast enough to accomplish their goal.

“She recognises her limits and she knows if we lose the brains of the operation then we’re all fucked.” Latin told him acerbically. “ _That’s_ why she doesn’t want you going in alone.”

“I shall not be alone for long. Only so long as it takes to open the doors.” Dracula managed a smile. “Then she shall have her weight in carnage if she so desires.”

“Gee, I dunno, might have to convince her on that one.”

Dracula managed a scant laugh but it didn’t quite reach his eyes in true mirth.

Latin’s canine nose quivered a moment, scenting him and she cocked her head. Fingers dancing as she spoke.

“Not any better?”

“She’s not eating.” Dracula looked pained a moment. He had given up the attempt of lying to Latin weeks ago. She could smell it from a mile off.

Literally.

“Still very angry with me.”

Dracula was painfully aware of the bond he still shared with Agatha. If he had expected it to lessen at all then he had been sorely mistaken. The draw to return to her only grew stronger with each day. He was staggeringly aware of her discomfort, her pain, her anger with him. He knew that her sleep was disrupted and that she was swamped with simmering irritation the majority of her waking hours.

It was somehow vague, distant, but still incredibly sharp and clear to him. Like the colours scrolling across the sky at sunset.

“You did kinda step out on her.” Latin bared her sharp teeth for an instant to show what she thought of that. “She was pretty…attached to you from what we saw. Makes sense she’d be pissy about it. You being bonded an all.”

Dracula’s eyes snapped to hers, a flash of crimson ringing dark irises before he could stop it.

“Peace, man.” Latin held up her hands in surrender. “I can still smell her on you after a month. That doesn’t _happen_ without some magical intervention. You’re in her blood and vice versa. She might not be _able_ to be less mad at you.”

Dracula drained his mug of blood and considered that a moment.

“Come to think of it, she might not be able to eat either.” Latin continued. “You said it was an instinct thing? If she’s imprinted onto you and she’s supposed to feed from just you, maybe she can’t have anyone else.”

Dracula felt a flush of completely irrational anger at the thought of Agatha feeding from another. The lance of rage spiked hard in his chest and he worked to control it.

“Dude. Keep it under control huh?” Latin made a show of leaning back, her muzzle wrinkled at the sudden sharpness to his scent.

Nobody wanted to smell a pissed off concubus, not when they had a nose like Latin’s.

“Apologies.” Dracula set his mug down with exaggerated care. He didn’t want to shatter it. “I do not expect her to starve but she is not the only one with instincts.”

“You going to be able to stay long enough to do this thing?” Latin cocked her head.

“Of course.” Dracula nodded, his certainty complete. “It would cost too much to return now. Besides, she wouldn’t have me anyway.”

“If you say so.” Latin shrugged. “Though if you’re so damn determined to be out in the wild rather than tame, you might want to consider getting over yourself so she can eat someone.”

With that, Latin turned and prowled away.

Dracula sighed.

Well, it wasn’t as if he was with them for their company.

**_Winchester…_ **

“Hellboy? Hellboy, can you hear me?!” Dracula took the younger male by the huge shoulders and propped him up against a marble tomb.

The demon was drunk on a powerful dose of sedative, semi-conscious, drifting in and out. Dracula and his team had arrived just barely in time to prevent the boy from being snatched up by the Harkers. They had lured him out here with tales of some sort of rabid monster cat on the loose. Complete bollocks but Hellboy and the BPRD were the type to believe that sort of thing and go sodding looking.

“Hellboy.” Dracula slapped lightly at Hellboy’s crimson cheek and dully glowing orange eyes fluttered open.

It took him a moment but Hellboy seemed to tune back into regularly broadcast frequencies.

“Heeeyyyyy, Drac, my man. How ya doin’?!” Hellboy lifted both arms, clapping his hands down on Dracula’s shoulders hard enough to bow even his spine.

“Nnf! I’m…just peachy, thanks.” Dracula coughed, a little winded.

“You look like shit, man.” Hellboy drawled and seemed to be distracted by something behind Dracula.

There were odd…crunching sounds. Hellboy peered into the dim. Usually his night vision was pretty good but he was feeling a little fuzzy round the edges at that particular moment. It took him a hot second to realise what he was seeing.

“Aw, man, that is NOT a cat.” Hellboy shook his head, despairing of the identifying capabilities of the average civilian. “That is quite CLEARLY a big ass doggo.”

Dracula glanced over his shoulder to see one of the wolves nearby. Quite calmly eating a Harker corpse. Dracula hardly begrudged the beast his meal, he had worked hard for it. European wolves had always been maneaters anyway, far more aggressive than the North American types according to Latin at any rate. Apparently it made for a very interesting difference between the two continents’ werewolf populations as well.

“Who’s a good boy?!” Hellboy cooed to the wolf. “Who is the _best boy_?!”

“Hellboy, focus.” Dracula snapped his fingers in front of Hellboy’s face and managed to drag him back to the present. “You’ve been drugged, lad. How do you feel?”

“Fuckin’. GREAT.” Hellboy nodded succinctly.

“Excellent.” Dracula managed a smile. “I cannot stay long, but long enough to make sure no more Harkers are about. My colleagues are sweeping the area.”

“Colleagues…they’re wolves, man. That’s a _pack_.” Hellboy enunciated clearly. “Dracula’s pack -oh- Drac Pack!” Hellboy threw his head back and boomed a laugh.

Dracula’s smile was lopsided but it was genuine. He could see why this boy was Agatha’s favourite.

His smile lessened a little when his thoughts drifted to his wife. She was worse now than she had been when he had left and her pain was constantly in his mind.

“Hellboy, can you take a message for me?”

“Sure, man.” Hellboy nodded easily. “Can’t guarantee I’ll remember shit, but you can tell me.”

“It’s about Agatha.” Dracula began but Hellboy was already talking.

“Aw, man! I have a BONE to pick with you about that!” Hellboy punched Dracula in the chest with his stone hand and Dracula had to twist much of the momentum off in order to avoid his ribs being staved in. “What the fuck did you think you were doin’?! Leavin’ her like that! I thought you were _cool_. Dick move. Asshat.”

Dracula took that in good graces. He had thought nothing worse of himself after all. Though perhaps his own self directed insults had been less…Colonial.

“She’s in pain.” Dracula tried again.

“No shit!” Hellboy snorted.

“She won’t eat. You need to tell her to eat someone.” Dracula took a moment but he had been working himself up to saying it for a while now. That and his discomfort was something he could live with far easier than he could Agatha’s. “Elisa and Abraham. She is close to them. She could feed from them, could she not?”

“I mean…” Hellboy stalled, thinking that over. He frowned. The thinking part seemed to take a long time. “Oooooooh, you mean, while they’re…?!” Hellboy made a lewd and unmistakeable gesture with his hands.

“Yes, while they fuck.” Dracula nodded. “I doubt one of them could satisfy her but between the two of them, there should be ample energy for her to feed from.”

“Aw, dude, that’s…I mean, she’s like my big sister, man.” Hellboy looked pained.

“She has to eat.”

Hellboy wrestled with that a long moment and then slowly nodded. He accepted that, yes, she did have to feed. For the safety of others if nothing else.

“You’ll tell her?”

“Yeah. I’ll tell her. She’s gonna be pissed as hell that you didn’t stay though.”

“I am accustomed to such things.” Dracula chuckled.

“Hey, Drac?” Hellboy gripped him by the wrist suddenly.

“Hmm?”

“D’you love her?”

Dracula blinked at Hellboy. He honestly hadn’t expected the question. No one else had ever asked it of him. N’Dama didn’t care, Latin could likely smell it and didn’t need to ask, Broom would have rather snarked than asked an honest question…but Hellboy. Hellboy would ask.

“Of course I do.” Dracula tilted his head. “It is hard for her to understand right now, hard even for me to understand at times considering how wrong it feels to be parted from her, but I love her dearly. I do this for her safety.”

“Oh. Shit. Harsh.”

“It is.”

“She loves you too. She hates it.” Hellboy shook his head.

“Understandable.” Dracula didn’t think for one moment that it was affection for him that she despised.

Agatha had a psychic tether securing her to a man she cared not at all but her body screamed for. The heat in her blood, the one that was soothed by his presence, had simmered lower but it had not disappeared. The fact that she wasn’t feeding likely made that worse.

“Dracula.”

N’Dama loomed out of the gloom of the graveyard in a gleam of white fur under dark clothing. She moved with a deceptively soft tread for a creature her size, her sledgehammer slung casually over one shoulder.

“We have searched the surroundings, there are no others. Sirens are approaching.”

Latin chuffed a sound from somewhere in the dark. The wolves feasting on the Harker remains lifted their heads at the sound and then listened to the short howl that followed. As one, they darted away and into the night, retreating on Latin’s order. Some of them paused only to snatch another mouthful of meat before disappearing but they had melted away in seconds.

“Oh, _wow_.”

Dracula turned back to see Hellboy gazing wide eyed up at N’Dama. His crimson mouth opened in a slack ‘o’ of awe.

“Honey, you are about my size.”

Dracula couldn’t stop the sudden snort of laughter that coughed from him at the look of pure _bafflement_ that crossed N’Dama’s face before she managed to recover herself.

“Perhaps you’ll be big enough when your horns grow in.” She snorted and turned away on one hoof, disappearing into the night.

“Aw, man, I’m in love. Who is that?” Hellboy twisted, trying to see where N’Dama disappeared off to and ended up falling on his face for his troubles.

“My colleague, N’Dama. She was in the rig with Agatha and I when the Harkers took us. Latin is here also and the Chupacabra will be about here somewhere draining someone dry.” Dracula straightened Hellboy up against the tomb again and made sure the demon was capable or remaining somewhat vertical.

“She call me small? Ow. My feelings.” Hellboy pressed a hand to his chest as if wounded.

“Remember the message to Agatha.” Dracula told him firmly.

Even he could hear the sirens now and he didn’t have much time.

“You love her and she should have a threesome. Got it.” Hellboy nodded succinctly.

Dracula opened his mouth to correct the boy but the local constables had arrived and it was time for him to leave.

“Close enough.”

Dracula disappeared in a blink, a swirl of mist curling in his wake.

Nothing but dead bodies and a drunk demon left for the locals to find.

**_Venezuela…_ **

“How did it go?” N’Dama loomed out of the palatial house at Dracula’s approach.

It belonged to a drug baron of some cartel or another. The fellow had offered rooms to Dracula and companions in exchange for taking care of some special forces types sent down from the United States. It had been good practice to take the team out, strip them of their equipment and send them home (mostly) intact.

Without the need to feed on all and sundry, Dracula had little need to murder the whole lot of them and had settled for convincing them with some mental pressure that going home was absolutely imperative. He had fed only enough to ‘download’ the information required to use the SEALs’ equipment and had sent them packing. He had also learned that he could then share this information with N’Dama and Latin if it was fresh enough to him.

N’Dama had preferred the old fashioned approach to learning, blood being something of a foreign flavour to her, but Latin had taken to the exchange with relish. Her eidetic memory meant that, whilst some memories might fade for Dracula, she retained everything he gifted her.

Venezuela had turned them very dangerous in a very short time and it had been that and that alone that had convinced Dracula to answer the call of the locals.

Young women were going missing. Turning up broken, brutalised and drained dry sometimes weeks or months later. Dracula knew well enough the feeding patterns of his former kin and it had not taken him long at all to track down the nest of vampires that called themselves the Red Court.

Dracula did not really require ‘breaks’ from his crusade, but he had taken the weekend to wade into the jungle and make his feelings on such ill practices known. It might make no difference in the long run, but the locals had been kind, they staffed the house that Dracula and his companions occupied and the wolves didn’t seem to frighten them much at all. For their practicality alone (an increasingly rare commodity in some parts of this modern world) Dracula felt he owed them a measure of safety.

“The king is dead.” Dracula slung the pack from his shoulder and dumped it on the front steps leading into the house. Gold, jewels and antique marvels spilled onto the paving slabs. “Gold still sells, does it not?”

“Yes, fearless leader, gold still sells.” N’Dama drawled, folding her massive arms over her chest. She pursed dark lips, studying the wealth strewn over paving slabs outside the drug baron’s house. “You are going soft.”

“These people have been good to us. It costs us nothing to repay them in kind.” Dracula insisted. “Besides, I like it here. It would be favourable to return.”

“The humidity leaves much to be desired.” N’Dama snorted and looked about herself.

The gardens were perfectly manicured and well tended. Gardeners even now fussed with rare blooms and trimmed lawns. Somehow, the wolves lounging in every scrap of shade afforded them did not bother the locals at all.

Then again, considering the villagers below lived between a drug cartel and a vampire nest, it would take quite a bit to rattle them. Humans could grow used to almost anything.

Including nearly every breed of wolf known to man, a woman with a wolf face, a bull woman that towered over everyone and Count Fucking Dracula moving in with their friendly neighbourhood drug baron.

Some things just were not worth getting upset over.

“You are as stunning as ever.” Dracula told her sincerely and N’Dama rolled her eyes, reaching up to tug at the frizzing of her braided white hair. It was piled up onto a knot on top of her head and she despaired at the prospect of attempting to smooth it in this heat.

“How did your darling wife ever let you go?” N’Dama shot back and Dracula grinned.

N’Dama might never be able to believe a complement but Dracula was never insincere in the giving of them either. She truly was a stunning creature. He was not attracted to her, nor entirely sure of his safety in her presence, but that just made her all the more likeable as far as Dracula was concerned.

“Uneasily. At first.” Dracula admitted and N’Dama raised a brow.

“She grows well again?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Perhaps now you will finally focus on your goals.”

“Yes, madam.” Dracula laid a hand over his chest and sketched a bow to her. “Whatever my dearest general so desires.”

N’Dama snorted again. She could communicate much in such a manner and it was usually disdainful.

“I desire that we quit our languishing in paradise and move onto our next target.”

“Your will be done.” Dracula smirked and passed her to head into the cool of the house. He did enjoy the simmering heat of the jungle but air conditioning was still a wonderful thing.

N’Dama clipped quietly after him and closed the door on their heels.

“Latin!” Dracula called for their third and bent to greet the Chupacabra when it trotted out to meet him. “Hello, Lad. Been behaving?”

“He attempted to eat another police officer.” N’Dama drawled.

“Understandable.” Dracula clapped the canine on the ribs and felt it fall in step with him as he went on the hunt for their resident werewolf. “Latin?”

Latin clapped twice in the direction of the kitchen and Dracula changed course to find her. Now that he paid attention, he could scent something spiced and decadent being cooked.

“There you are.” Dracula entered the palatial kitchen and Latin tossed her head with a chuff of sound to show she had heard. “Allow me. We need to talk.”

Dracula shooed her away from the range in the kitchen and took over her meal of…spiced meat laden with flavour already heavy in the air.

Latin was an excellent cook and she had been invaluable in increasing Dracula’s knowledge on the subject.

It took mere moments for them to set up for a meal at the island worktop in the massive kitchen. Dracula pouring the meat into a prepared dish alongside the makings for enchiladas. N’Dama of course forewent much of it in favour of the salad bowl and guacamole but Dracula and Latin were happily omnivorous.

“Wine?” Dracula offered N’Dama and poured for her when she accepted.

Latin, of course, declined but settled herself with her cup of water instead.

“I have new information.” Dracula announced as he sat, waving for his lieutenants to dig into the prepared meal. “The Red Court are aware of the Harkers and, once I had convinced them that they needed to listen to reason, were willing to share the same.”

“How far can we trust them?” Latin looked up from assembling her meal, hands abandoning the task in favour of speaking.

“I think far enough. We know from the facility in China of another black site. This one was rumoured to be in Africa… _somewhere_. The Red Court vampires added more to this. They seem to think that it is somewhere North of Capetown.”

“North of Capetown is an entire continent.” N’Dama drawled.

“What she said.” Latin pointed.

“True, but it is one of the continents we have not yet explored and I think it worth the visit. I have vague memories that seem like they could have been from Africa. Latin, if you could attempt image searches?”

“Sure.” Latin nodded.

“Give the images to me also.” N’Dama spoke suddenly. “Capetown and the surrounds are not unknown to me.”

Dracula and Latin both looked to N’Dama with surprise. The larger female rarely spoke of her past and did not often hint of favouring any one place in her background. Dracula and Latin had discussed the possibility of N’Dama’s accent being as South African as it could sometimes sound but neither of them had ever braved the woman’s temper enough to ask outright.

“Of course.” Dracula sipped his wine. “Have you family to visit there?”

N’Dama crunched on leaves for the longest time and Dracula glanced at Latin, unsure if he would receive an answer.

“Perhaps.” N’Dama allowed after a long moment.

“You should take time to visit them. We do not know when we may get the chance again.” Dracula sat back in his seat, measuring N’Dama’s response.

She nodded slowly.

“It would be good to see my siblings again.”

“Are we gonna get introduced?” Latin’s jaws parted and her tongue lolled in a canine grin.

“Absolutely not. I have standards.”

Latin barked a laugh and Dracula joined her in a low chuckle.

“Boss, you going to let her speak to us like that?” Latin turned to Dracula.

“I do not control any of you. You have all made that abundantly clear. I have no respect here.” Dracula sipped his wine but there was no venom in his tone. They were of like mind and shared a common goal. What else could he ask for?

“Well, what else are friends for?” Latin waved between them all.

N’Dama and Latin shared a laugh and missed entirely the surprised look that passed quickly over Dracula’s face.

 _Friends_.

He glanced between the two females which he had been sharing his adventures with and stilled when he realised…he did hold them in regard. Not just that of a commanding officer in charge of troops, he had done so in the past and the dynamic was different.

N’Dama and Latin truly did not kowtow to him nor follow his orders blindly. He did not pay them for their time or efforts. They shared a task, their motivations alike, but neither of them were bound by any sort of oath to stay at his side. They could both leave him at any time and make his task that much harder.

Dracula was more than a little startled to realise that he would have felt their loss if either of them had done so. He would have…missed their presence. Felt a loss of their shared meals together, the jokes they passed the time with when travelling in the belly of whichever transport that had bought, bargained or stolen. Dracula would find it odd not to be surrounded by the many furry bodies of wolves as he rested, a Chupacabra in a hooded sweatshirt sprawled over his chest, snoring into his ear.

He had grown surprisingly used to them in such a short time and he was… _pleased_ that they seemed to feel the same.

Friends.

Huh.

First time for everything, he supposed.

**_Africa…_ **

He thought it was his imagination the first time it had happened.

Dracula walked through the grassy plains of the Serengeti, the Chupacabra prowling at his side, watching the sun set in a riot of purples, pinks and fiery reds.

The sun was beautiful in this country, spilling light and colour gloriously across everything it touched. The heat during the day was incredible, lasting well into the night but the _night_. When she fell it was in a spill of stars. The arms of the Milkyway spiralling across the heavens with a vibrance he had not seen in centuries.

The sky here crystal clear in the depths of the dark. A blanket of stars thrown over the entire world, bathing the rolling plains in a soft and glimmering light.

Dracula glanced back at the village in the distance.

N’Dama had relented after they had found and destroyed another Harker base of operations. She had announced that the emancipated subjects of Harker subjects needed time and space to recover and she knew of a place. She had led them here, to the valley in which her people lived.

N’Dama simply referred to her family, extended or otherwise, as The People and Dracula had never found the effort to ask what their species name was if they even had one.

From what he had gathered, of tapestries and stolen half heard stories, N’Dama’s ancestor, a minotaur of some prodigious size, had travelled from Greece to settle in this very spot. He had taken up with a local girl, married and lived well. N’Dama and her many, many, relatives were their descendants.

A curious mix of minotaur and human. They all had varying degrees of bovine in them, N’Dama being one of the more minotaur like descendants with her resplendent white fur, statuesque height, curling horns, shining hooves and swishing tail. Her relatives rarely shared all of those characteristics.

Some of them had the deep dark skins of local humans. A shade so dark that it shaded purple and blue in the light. Sometimes they had delicate hooves instead of toes. A set of broad curling horns. Teeth too square to be human, a tail or perhaps just the white fur or hair. They were a striking people to observe and had welcomed Dracula alongside Latin and her wolf army with open arms.

They had taken in the injured and battered, the shellshocked and traumatised creatures that they had rescued from the Harkers. Usually, such inmates were kept well enough to escape as soon as Dracula and his cohorts broke down the walls, but not this time.

The team had interrupted the Harkers in the act of retreating. They had been shutting down the facility, in the process of wiping harddrives and… _liquidating_ assets.

Dracula was familiar with blood. Something of a connesuier one might say, but even he had been disturbed by the dead and dying left in the wake of the Harker ‘scientists’. They had ripped what they had needed from the bodies of their captives and sent them back to their cells. They had not even spared the overdose of narcotics needed to let the unfortunate creatures slip away in a haze of drugs without organs they needed to survive.

It had not been the first time that Dracula and Latin had been forced to end the suffering of those left in the wake of the Harkers…but it had hit harder this time.

Dracula had not known why, only that it had.

It hadn’t been until he’d been wading through the tall grasses at the edges of the village that he had named it.

 _Heartbreak_.

Dracula sank down onto his heels, looping his arm over the back of the Chupacabra when it sat on its haunches beside him. It laid its spines flat so as not to skewer its arm.

“I wonder if we shall ever be done with them, eh, Lad?” Dracula hefted a sigh, ruffling the beast’s ears. “Every stone we overturn seems to simply reveal more of the scuttling bastards fleeing for cover. Time is something I have an excess of but…are we enough?”

The Chupacabra turned, pressing his cold nose to Dracula’s cheek and the man smiled. The beast was strangely affectionate at times. Would cuddle up to Dracula with the least provocation or warning but would not deign another to touch him at all. Even N’Dama kept her distance.

“Still, it is not as if I have a home aside from the one I have made, hmm? Nothing waits for me in England. My wife is bettering her health but…she will only continue to do so without me. If nothing else, she deserves that freedom.”

The Chupacabra turned to him, dully glowing eyes sullen in the falling night, but snorted as if in disagreement.

“I am simply feeling maudlin. I miss her. That is all.” Dracula hefted a sigh and straightened to his full height again.

He looked out at the sunset, plucking a blade of grass to twirl between his fingers.

By the night, he _missed_ Agatha.

The bond had not faded in the least. He could feel _everything_ of her. He had been incredibly aware when she had finally broken her fast and fed on someone. His own new set of instincts howling that it should be he that satisfied her but he could not. Not when the Harkers were still a danger to her and not…not when she still despised him.

He did not know if she would ever forgive him for leaving. He could scarce forgive himself at times. He doubted himself often and that was incredible in and of itself. He had never second guessed himself, had not been raised with the trait, but missing Agatha. Missing Agatha like he had missed his own damned heartbeat after he had first risen as a vampire…it had changed his whole world.

She had at least.

Casually, effortlessly, with pride and a smirk, she had rattled his world to its very foundations all those years ago at the convent. He had crawled out of the skin of a wolf to face her, to show his true form, because he had wanted her to see him. Wanted her to look at his whole self as he drank her in.

If only he had known then what he was getting into. If only he had realised how she would burrow under his skin as violently as he had the wolf’s.

Then again, had he known that she would be bound to him from then on, if he had realised that his heart had been up for unwitting sale, he doubted he’d have had the bravery to meet her. He’d have taken to his heels and run for the hills. Retreated back to his castle and picked someone else, someone lesser, someone safer.

The echo of her all but haunted him these days. He felt as if he could taste her on his tongue, see her out the corner of his eye at times. She was magnificent as always but…different in his mind. Calmer. He sometimes saw her as reaching for him, looking for him, in his dreams but he knew such things only dwelled in the fantasies of his thoughts.

Agatha did not want him. Why on earth would she look for him?

She was here.

The knowledge thundered through his every sense and he jumped about a foot in the air in genuine surprise.

He could _smell_ her. Taste her in the air, feel her warmth against his skin. He landed, spinning on his heels and saw her for a split instant. Stood directly behind him, blinking at him as if he was the last thing he had expected to see. He thought himself hallucinating and he probably had been but his breath caught anyway because she was _there_.

Right there.

Her eyes seemed to meet his and she _laughed_.

It was the best sound. Rich and full of life. It came from deep in her throat as pure and as honest as she had always been. Unflinchingly her in every aspect.

Then she was gone.

Dracula took a hesitant step forward, his hand reaching as if to touch where she had been but there was nothing there of course.

Had it been real?

Had she truly been reaching for him?

His mind touched to the bond in the back of his skull and he sucked in a breath as if he had gripped a livewire in his hand rather than a particularly strong thought. It thrummed with the energy of use and he realised…she had been looking for him.

She had reached for him.

Dracula grinned until his face hurt.

Perhaps there was hope after all. 

**_Australia…_ **

His wife, whom he adored, was a damned _menace_.

He was trying to sleep. It had been a long week of crawling through the undergrowth towards yet another Harker facility to scope it out for their coming attack.

The Harkers were, rather predictably, shitting themselves. There was, however, no sign of this being a detainment facility. They seemed to have run out of those or those that had been in use had been shut down, forcing Dracula and his cohorts to pick other targets.

Targets lesser in the physical challenge of dominating considering they were not staffed by soldiers but rather technicians. These were theoretical research facilities. Stuffed to the brim with hard drives and row upon row upon row of computer servers. They were closing in on the intellectual centre of the Harker’s web. Once they took its brain…maybe then it would finally be dead.

Still, Agatha didn’t care about that. She cared about heckling him.

They’d had this connection now for nearly half a year and it was nearly always active in some form or another. They tended to be _aware_ of one another, to varying degrees, throughout the day. If she was bored at work, stuck in the belly of some BPRD office, then her favoured sport had become prodding at him.

No matter what he happened to be doing at the time.

It was not a verbal connection as such. As far away as he was from her. So far away that if he kept going, he’d be on his way back again. It relied mostly on the broadest of strokes to communicate between them. Words were an effort, taxing to both of them to send, particularly when he was as tired as he was, but she made the effort anyway. He could do nothing less than return the favour. Feelings were much easier to send. Blooming in colours and flushes against each other’s minds.

It was…nice.

Dracula would freely admit that he had come to rely on the bond. With the things he had seen, the acts he had committed in their time apart, it would have been easy to quiet that tiny flickering candle of humanity that remained in him. The part that he had thought extinguished centuries ago. The part that Agatha alone seemed to have a hardline connection to.

Her favourite part of him.

And she _did_ have a favourite part. She sought out the company of his mind against hers often enough that he was now convinced that she enjoyed his mental presence alongside her own at least on some level.

She still yelled at him but it was restricted to when she had stumbled across an instance of his terror at nearly being eaten by some Eldritch horror that a Harker scientist had unleashed upon their last raid in his laboratory. It had been a hair raising fight in more ways than one and the scientist had died somewhat spectacularly when Dracula had managed to destroy the spell binding the creature to this plane. Allowing it the freedom to return to whichever level of hell from which it had sprung. _Through_ the scientist in question.

Dracula had been aware of Agatha stumbling across his frantic mindscape in the depths of the battle but he’d had little in the way of resources to entertain her in that moment. It had not been until much later, when he was picking bone chunks and splattered brain out of his hair and showering, that her mind had sought his again.

They had been close enough for words at that point and she had wasted none in her vitriol at what she took to be his rampant stupidity. She had been quite cross with his actions, livid that he had been so endangered and he hadn’t really known how to react to that.

If she was angry that he was in danger…what did that mean?

He had decided to let her see more of his inner thoughts of her. Allowed himself to let her feel what he felt for her. Telling her outright that he had missed her.

That had involved more yelling and to a prolonged separation of a week between conversations mind to mind between them. He had been the one to leave, she was right about that…but then she had also admitted that she hadn’t offered him much incentive to stay.

If she’d been safe, it might have been different. If he had thought for one second that staying by her side was enough to keep the Harkers from _harvesting_ her then he’d have been a kept man. He’d have revelled in it. He’d have waited at home for her on any given night and made it his life’s work to keep a smile about her lips, a meal on the table and fragrant flowers on the grounds of wherever they settled with one another.

But that was not to be, was it?

It had been an emotional decision to leave her. He had been…upset that she had looked at him as nothing more than a glorified pet. He had always held her in such high regard and he freely admitted that it had wounded his ego mightily to see that she had ever disdained him. The only reason she had ever played nice was due to the power he held over her through sheer physicality.

However, once that had changed, once she had become his equal in power and influence, in thirst for blood…she’d had no need to humour him anymore. Her dislike had been plain for she had no reason to hide it. No reason to pander to him and he…had not liked what he had seen reflected of himself in her scornful gaze.

He had not wanted to be kept by her as…something less than. She had said she wanted a partnership and that was not what he could have been to her. Not then.

Much had changed in the ensuing months.

Her mind prodded at his again and he hummed at the intrusion. It was far from unwelcome but he was exhausted and not up to his usual standard of entertainment.

He jolted when her mind _slammed_ into his suddenly and jolted him back to full wakefulness. He grunted deep in his throat and she chuckled to herself. He could feel it in his chest, an echo of her action.

He smiled tiredly.

 _Awake_. He promised her.

The feeling she sent back told him smugly that she was quite aware. She did not reply immediately, studying her own thoughts and he nudged her when she seemed content to simply have him remain awake in the back of her mind. Usually he would not mind, he would happily observe her however she chose to let him, but sleep was a rather pressing need as he’d not managed some in near a week.

 _Sorry_. She mocked lightly and he snorted. She was anything but.

 _Lie._ He responded and felt the flush of her amusement as sunset pink and fire orange against his senses.

 _Tired?_ The question was innocent enough but he knew that she was fishing.

She was ever trying to wheedle his location out of him and he steadfastly refused to be drawn into revealing himself. His practice in drawing information from the Harkers and passing it amongst his troops had improved his mental abilities greatly. He now no longer deeded the medium of blood to invade another’s mind. He could simply touch them or maintain prolonged eye contact.

That had come as a surprising relief to him. He still preferred not to bite another if he could at all manage it. He survived well enough on donations from Latin or N’Dama though the majority of his needs were met by more human foods.

Rather than be drawn into such unpleasant thoughts, Dracula twisted around in his bedroll to lay on his back. He propped his head in the crook of one arm and sent a flush of emotion to her. Amusement at her antics and a mild reprove not to take her boredom out on him. He was not entirely serious.

He knew it his fault that she had been restricted to more admin related tasks in the BPRD considering their organisation had more leaks than a colander. He’d gone over her head to make sure that the higher ups knew of the defections he had uncovered. They had pleasingly deemed it wise to keep Agatha close to home.

His next missive to Agatha was a question he asked so often that it no longer needed words. He wanted to know if she had been keeping up her circuit of BPRD safehouses and stayed in one place no longer than a week or so.

She would have stability soon, he promised himself. When the Harkers were done. She could return to her own home and settle herself.

_Y E S._

Dracula huffed in amusement at her long-suffering sigh that he felt through the bond. Strangely enough, she did not seem to resent him for heckling her employers to keep her on the move. He had expected more of a push back on it but she seemed to have taken it in her stride.

He felt her emotions play over his like sunlight dappling over his fingers. It was nice to simply be like this. Her head whirring away in the back of his. Her beautiful mind ticking over to itself, grumbling about him rather good naturedly, heckling him for entertainment purposes and idly wishing that he was closer because she- -

Dracula bolted upright in his sleeping bag on the desert floor, surprise washing through him, knocking the Chupacabra off the bed roll with a grumble onto the dust.

He quieted himself and the beast, petting the Chupacabra to settle it beside him again.

Internally, he scarcely believed what he had read of her. He hesitated moment, fully awake and alert but he could not stop himself asking.

_Really?_

He felt a flush of deep pink embarrassment from her, an undersheen of violet affection and a spark of yellow self-deprecation at not regimenting her own thoughts.

 _No._ She told him, unconvinced to even herself and he grinned so wide he thought his head might split in half.

_Lie._

He felt her heave a sigh on her end, rub at the back of her neck and tug at her hair in pseudo annoyance at being caught. It took her a long moment to admit to him the truth.

 _Yes_. She was barely a whisper in his mind but Dracula sucked in a deep breath of the arid night air and ran his tongue over his teeth in delight.

She _missed_ him.

She missed his presence. His self. She wished for him to be closer to her for no other reason than she had grown accustomed to his company.

The simmering attraction between them, that had ignited the moment she had seen him wearing only blood over a century ago, was still present. That had survived, death, oceans, Harkers and a planet being between them. He didn’t think there would be a time when their bodies would not crave one another but…this was different.

She liked him. She wanted _him._ Not only that but she had admitted it not only to herself but…to him as well.

Dracula lay back down, giddy with excitement. He barely managed to settle himself until the Chupacabra flopped heavily over his chest and dropped into dozing snores. He petted the beast idly, his mind focused a world away, on Agatha. Blending his consciousness with that who he was bonded to.

He sent her no more messages. No more words. She was on the back foot with this revelation and he did not wish to spook her or draw her into an argument that would detract from the raw honesty of it. He had never thought she would admit it to him. Never.

He lay quietly, his mind cuddled into hers and she was tense for a few moments, expecting him to be vocally smug (and he was but he kept that to himself). She soothed herself soon enough, half her attention on him and the other half on what she was doing. The report she was writing.

If he closed his eyes, he could sense the peace that such routine actions brought her. She did not prefer paperwork but she knew it a necessity. It also meant that she was allowed her own laboratory, a price she was more than willing to pay in order to understand the world around her. Filling out reports was a simple task that pleased the productive aspect of her personality. Simple tasks to cross off in the name of accomplishment for the sake of it.

She was at peace.

The world was on fire in many ways, Dracula was often the one to start the blaze in question (literally), but she remained at peace.

Dracula burrowed into the feeling, drawing it around his mind as one would pull a thick fur over them in the winter cold, and fell to sleep.

She missed him.

It was more than a start.

**_London…_ **

He was nervous.

Which was both ridiculous and perfectly acceptable, he thought.

Dracula looked around the apartment he had chosen. Double checked the security, the location, the décor. Everything was in place. Everything as it should be.

Almost.

His other half was missing.

Dracula fought the urge to roll his eyes at himself. He had given up on his independence from her months ago. He was attached, bonded, shackled. He felt absolutely no need to be free of her. In fact, coming back to her was…a relief.

It meant his war was over. His days of roving the planet, rooting the Harkers out of their hovels and dispatching them, were done.

He had spent over a year bringing the vile bunch to ruin. He had tracked, hunted, slaughtered, scorched and salted the earth like the conquerors of old. He had let his humanity fall away and loosed the beast on his enemies because that had been what had required of him. He had become a monster that even the monstrous feared…but that was not all.

He had not lost what little humanity he had gained during his time with Agatha. He had never managed to extinguish that flicker of… _hope_ he had kindled for her.

He had saved those he could, granted a merciful end to those he had not. He had raised an army, taken those that hadn’t the will to fight to safety and lain siege to humans that would grind those like him into bits in the name of the almighty dollar.

He had made allies, he had made _friends_. He had found the time and the compassion to protect those weaker than he and he hadn’t done that in a literal age. It had not seemed pointless. He had not looked upon their lives as _nothing_ simply because their existence might have been fleeting in comparison to his. They were not human but they had been _people_ to him. Not pale shadows of life that he had thought would fade between one breath and the next.

He still didn’t like humans. His year in tracking the Harkers, culling them whenever he came across them, it had not endeared him to their so called humanity. The Harkers, he knew, were likely some of the worst of the worst, but he’d been unable to summon the mercy to spare even one of them. He had felt nothing bar recoil when shooting one from a mile away nor the warm wet of blood if he had beheaded one in person with his own hands.

Still…for now, the fighting was done.

He was in London again. The place he had spent over a hundred years attempting to settle. He looked over the unfamiliar skyline that seemed so distant to him and yet so familiar to the echo of Agatha in the back of his mind.

He had been quiet in the bond and he knew that she was concerned. He had minimised contact with her after California.

There had been so much to do after the destruction of the Harker’s headquarters that he’d barely had the time to send a fleeting feeling her way once or in the aftermath. It had been _months_ of sifting through the data of the Harker holdings. Demolishing their subsidiary companies, liquidating their assets and rearranging for offshore accounts, human money being repurposed for the inhumans they had hoped to defile.

There had been the small matter of getting the giants North of the border into the Canadian wilderness where they might not be seen. The thousands upon thousands of captives to be sorted through at N’Dama’s village. Arrangements to be made to take those to their homes that wanted to leave, expansions to be made to the small African village for those that wished to stay.

He, N’Dama and Latin had worked for weeks to build more housing, dig roads, lay infrastructure. Dracula had mesmerised, bargained, blackmailed and outright bought local human officials in order to make things happen. The village had grown into a township and was now practically a sovereign nation in and of itself. Dracula had poured enough gold into their coffers to keep them happy for generations and then he had turned to Latin.

Returning their lycanthrope army to their countries of origin had taken several plane trips, some very creative paperwork and one particularly hair raising incident at the Serbian border to China. He had aided Latin in returning some now very sentient wolves to their natural habitats and had hypnotised more than one official on all seven continents into bringing legislation to bear that would protect the species. His own personal tithe to Latin had been that he would never again wear the skin of a wolf.

They disapproved of such things apparently.

It had been an easy sell on Dracula’s part and he had left Latin in charge of the plane they had stolen, her contact details in his mobile phone and a promise to call if she was needed and to answer if she had need of him.

After all that…coming home had seemed suddenly terrifying.

Dracula turned to look at himself in the mirror in the apartment’s entryway. He noted the differences in himself. He did look different. Different to what he had come to expect of his monstrous reflection, certainly, but different again from how he had appeared upon wading to shore over a year ago.

Different was good…right?

Dracula huffed out a breath. He was not built for indecision nor nerves. He found that anxiety sat ill with him and thought that to get it over with would be far preferable.

Nodding to himself sharply, Dracula stretched out his senses to the bond. Quiet but still strong in the back of his head. He sent his thoughts coasting along the length of it. He was careful to keep his touch light, his presence in Agatha’s mind featherweight as he insinuated his thoughts amongst hers.

She was distracted, thinking furiously and pacing. In her office if he had to guess. Her familiar habitats had a sense about them that he recognised. Someone was with her, the flaring bright of Hellboy’s energy taunting against her hunger with a temptation that she refused to even acknowledge because he was as a brother to her.

She became aware of him almost immediately. Her focus leaving the conversation with Hellboy and turning inward.

It was clear from the speed with which she did so that she had been waiting for him to make contact again and he allowed himself a small smile, brushing his mind against hers.

This close, in the same city, he felt as if he was practically in the same room as she.

 _Hello, love_. He was tentative in his greeting of her, unsure how she would have taken to the separation of the last few months. She could very well be angry with him.

_You’re well?_

Dracula was nearly staggered by the overwhelming presence of her mind delving into his as soon as she had the permission. Her presence engulfed him, spiriting through his body, checking for harm, wounds, scars, any reason that he had been so absent from her mind for the past two months.

 _Better now._ Dracula told her, leaving himself open to her, letting her look at the whole of him. Entirely open to her for the first time. He did not even hide where he was. _I’m home. In London._

He felt her surprise flush over his senses. Something of shock, excitement and…affection perhaps.

He sent her the image of his location. How to get to the apartment, the security code she would need to get inside. The door number. Precisely where he was.

_Can we meet? When you are ready?_

Dracula waited nervously for her response. Still unsure of his welcome. He never had been able to predict her, after all.

_Agatha?_

There was a sense of blistering speed from her. She was paying more attention to where she was putting her feet than what he was saying to her.

Still, she managed to spare him some warning.

_On my way._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH SHIT, SHE ON HER WAY!
> 
> Tune in next week to find what happens.
> 
> Will we get smut????
> 
> We fukn better.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FRIKKIN FINALLY

**Chapter 17 - …In _Love_**

**_The Penthouse, London…_ **

Dracula prowled the street outside the apartment building and tried not to look as nervous as he felt.

She was on her way.

 _On her way_.

Dracula’s hands throttled one another before he remembered that such unsightly fidgeting was ungentlemanly. He sucked in a deep breath, inhaling the scents and smells of London, the smog, rank damp of the Thames, cars hissing by in a low hush of petroleum fumes and the sweet soaked concrete smell of petrichor. The rain lashed down on the city, slick and slithered down the faces of towering buildings all around him.

London was not home. Nothing of the metropolis was familiar but everything that _was_ home was on her way.

He had bolted from the apartment upon realising that she was coming _immediately._ Hurling himself down entire flights of stairs to slither to an ungainly halt outside in the overhang of the building’s entryway. He had shaved ten years off the life of the doorman with his sudden appearance but Dracula cared not at all for that.

He cared only for Agatha.

Who was on her way.

He had not wanted to assume anything. He had a plan, after all. He was to woo her. He had researched this thoroughly.

Latin and N’Dama had nearly laughed themselves sick when he had announced that he would court Agatha in whatever manner she desired. She had whole a planet, cultures and time periods to choose from and he was prepared to research and reenact each and every one of them if it gained her favour.

She had, of course, thrown a wrench in his collected and cool execution by bypassing any sort of waiting period when she had found out that he was finally in the same city as she. He had never expected that she would drop everything as soon as she found out he was near to come to his side. He thought it highly unusual but perhaps she wanted to yell at him in person.

Yes, that seemed more likely.

Her sprinting across the city to verbally (or otherwise) tear strips out of him in person was within his frame of reference for her. She did so enjoy their sparring. It had taken on a true tone of camaraderie in recent months. They still bickered, it was not in them not to, but there was an undercurrent of affection there. He had not contacted her in several weeks, she was bound to feel slighted by same and she must be on her way to make her displeasure known.

Dracula huffed out another breath he had not realised he had been holding and nodded to himself. Of course. This was familiar.

She would arrive, she would yell at him, he would take it in good graces and then attempt to charm her. She would roll her eyes at whatever over the top shenanigans he enacted or pronouncements he made and would allow herself to be talked into spending time with him.

It would be the same as their distant conversations through the bond but the only difference was that she would be here. In person.

Within touching distance.

Dracula huffed out a low breath that was a slightly less than human sound and ignored the worried look the doorman gave him.

“Sir?”

“Hmm?” Dracula’s head whipped around when the man spoke and he found himself on the end of a slightly concerned look. The doorman attempted to keep a professional indifference but it was clear that Dracula’s odd pacing and low growls to himself were perhaps freaking out the doorman and other tenants of the building.

“Are you alright? Can I call you a taxi?”

“No. Waiting on the wife.” Dracula continued to prowl back and forth across the entryway, causing more than one person to glance nervously at him from the pavement. “Haven’t seen her in quite a while. She may be cross.”

“Ah.” The doorman nodded as if he heard the same every day and Dracula supposed he might well have. He didn’t know his neighbours after all.

“Been working abroad.” Dracula didn’t usually care to make idle conversation but if he didn’t distract himself he might well run mad. “She wasn’t…a fan of the decision.”

“Ooh.” The doorman frowned and hissed in sympathy. “My missus would eat me alive if I pulled a disappearing act.”

“Would that I should be so lucky.” Dracula smiled tightly, claws extended and clacking against one another in nervous habit.

If the doorman noticed at all then he made no comment on the Count’s unusual manicure. Then again, considering the neighbourhood and the money of the tenants involved, Dracula might well be the least ‘eccentric’ person the doorman had met in quite a while.

“So, what’s the plan? Dinner? Fancy restaurant?” The doorman spoke again when it looked like Dracula might well implode if left to his own devices.

“Anything she wants.” Dracula nodded enthusiastically.

“How long you been away?”

“Over a year.”

The doorman made that sympathetic hissing sound again with an exaggerated wince.

“Perhaps a holiday home too?”

“Of course. There’s the castle, the Kruger house and I suppose I could secure the cartel mansion too…”

“Dracula.”

Dracula whirled on his heels, all the air leaving him, and he froze. Going entirely still when confronted with Agatha for the first time in sixteen months. All the air coughed from his lungs and he had no idea what she was thinking.

She stood under the shelter of the entryway, her slim shoulders heaving with every rasping breath she took. She was soaked to the skin, her clothes plastered to her, wet tendrils of hair clinging to her high cheekbones from the messy knot atop her head and he had _forgotten_ the bluest blue of her eyes that roved over every inch of him.

“Agatha.” Dracula managed to gather his wits after a moment, shaking himself. “You’re soaked! Where are your shoes?” Dracula crossed to her, shrugging out of his leather jacket and bundling her in the calf length leather.

“In the office. I ran here.” Agatha was still breathing hard but a smile was pulling at the corners of her mouth, she reached up, raking her nails through the growth on his jaw, pupils dilating. “The beard is new.”

“Ah, yes, something I’m trying out.” Dracula tilted his head, leaning his cheek into her palm, her thumb stroking the harsh line of his cheekbone.

A breath shivered from him and he’d have rolled his eyes at his own pathetic nature had he not surrendered to being absolutely smitten with her months ago. His hands pulled the leather of his coat closed over her slim form, trying to steady their shaking.

He grunted when she suddenly _had him_.

He was stooped down toward her, cranked at an odd angle he had not been prepared for. Her arms were wound around his neck tighter than creeping vines, her face buried into the side of his throat, inhaling deep lungfuls of his scent. She shivered, the movement translating into his body from hers and she squeezed him tighter.

“You’re back?” She spoke into his skin. “No more crusading? No more adventures?”

“I’m back.” Dracula was unable to prevent his arms from closing around her, pulling her tight into the curve of his body and lifting her slightly so that her toes barely brushed the marble steps beneath them. “Here to stay. You are my adventure. If you’ll have me.”

She coughed a sudden sound that he realised was a bark of laughter and drew back a little so that she could look up at him.

“If I’ll have you?” She hummed, one eyebrow arched his way and her lips pursed, her gaze slithering down over him like a physical thing. “I may need convincing.”

“Whatever you want, you shall have.” He promised her immediately. “I have made reservations for one of the better reviewed eateries in the city. I took the liberty of having some dresses delivered for you to choose from so that you do not feel underdressed though, it matters not to me what you wear, I- -” Dracula gulped into silence when her fingers lifted, tracing over his lower lip.

It took everything in him not to nip with his fangs and the smirk in the corner of her mouth told him that she knew it.

“You live here?”

“For now. Yes.” Dracula murmured against her fingers.

“Show me.”

“Of course.” Dracula nodded hurriedly, lacing his fingers through hers and pulling her into the building.

He ignored the barely repressed grin of the doorman as he swept the gilded doors open for them, ushering them inside with a subdued wish that they had a pleasant evening.

Dracula wasn’t even mad. He’d be the fool for Agatha a thousand times over.

He padded across the lobby, leading her to the private elevator that would take them straight to the penthouse and ushered her inside when the shining doors slid apart.

Agatha prowled into the carriage, her bare toes sinking into the plush red carpet beneath her feet. She tugged idly at the butter soft leather lapels of the coat he had bundled her into and regarded him from under hooded lashes. Her teeth sank into her lower lip and she regimented her control.

He was _babbling_ for her. The great Count Dracula, reduced to a stammering wreck. His dignity, poise and presence petered to nothing. She unnerved him. Had him on the back foot. Unsteadied and vulnerable.

It was _intoxicating_.

Agatha inhaled a steadying breath to make sure she didn’t pounce on him then and there. They should probably talk. About where he had been and what he had been up to. What his return meant. To him. To her. To them both.

The elevator ride seemed interminable to them both but they finally arrived on the top floor. Dracula herded her out into the resplendent entryway to his apartment and opened the door for her, waving her inside.

Agatha prowled into the apartment, aware of Dracula on her heels. She looked up and around, taking in the finery with a sweeping glance. It was decadent and finely appointed, she had expected little else. Expense dripped from every surface from the polished slate worktops of the kitchen area and chrome appliances to the dark wood floors and the matching boardroom table that dominated one end of the living area. A huge couch marked a sort of living room area complete with a fireplace she could have walked into without ducking and a flat screen television that could have also served as a tennis court if lain flat.

A floating staircase led her eye upward to a balcony that edged around the upper floors of the penthouse, bordering long slim windows that seemed three storeys tall, flanked by crimson curtains thrown wide. Library shelves yet to be filled with books lined the walls and Agatha could see a doorway or two that may well lead to the promise of a bedroom.

“Are you cold? I can set the fire.” Dracula murmured behind her and Agatha turned to him, the coat slithering from her shoulders to the floor in a slump of heavy leather.

Dracula watched it pool at her feet, his gaze darting back up to hers.

“I’m not cold.” She shook her head, slinking a step closer to him. “What do you want? Why did you come back?”

“For you.” He answered with a flattering immediacy. “It was all for you.”

“We’ve had words of attachment before between us. You spoke them. Then you left.” Much of the sting had leeched from that but she couldn’t hide whatever remained of it in her voice. They had been parted for a long time.

Parted over something he had done.

“Would you like a drink? Coffee perhaps?” Dracula waved towards the kitchen.

“I want you to answer my question.”

“And I will, but I would rather you were comfortable whilst I did so.” Dracula turned, prowling into the kitchen, wondering if she would follow him.

She did.

He was incredibly aware of her. Stood in the middle of the tiled kitchen floor, still dripping a little from her jaunt across the city but she barely seemed to notice. Dracula had learned himself from his globetrotting how tolerant their kind could be of temperature extremes and inclement weather conditions. Antarctica had been less than comfortable for him, but it had not pained him as it had Latin and N’Dama.

Dracula made the coffee. He had learned that much in their time apart and prepared it for her black at her instruction. Whilst he set the machine to brewing, he gathered his words. Attempting to calm himself as he did so.

He was incredibly aware that a lot was riding on this conversation and how he responded to her.

Agatha remained silent as the drinks were prepared and only murmured her thanks when he handed her a steaming mug. She hummed at the rich flavour (Turkish of course) and wrapped her hands around the ceramic. She propped one hip against a dark worktop and eyed him over the rim of her coffee cup. She was reminded of their conversation over a year ago in Molly’s little flat.

She had no desire to be fooled again.

“I left for you.” Dracula finally spoke. “I _stayed_ away for myself. I returned for…us.”

“Go on.” Agatha gave him nothing through her expression of course. She would not make it easy for him even now.

“I meant everything I said to you, over a year ago. I would have put myself entirely in your hands but with the Harkers’ plan revealed…I could not risk you. Not like that. You’d have pulled my teeth and insisted on honour in dealings with them. More people would have been taken, the risk to you would have heightened and I…I would have been unable to remain- - _tame_ for such things. Even had I stayed, I would have done something unforgiveable sooner or later. Through boredom, rage or any combination of any number of things. At least, leaving when I did, you would not have to see me be the monster again. That part was selfish and I own that. My first instinct with you has ever been to be selfish.”

“I’m aware.” Agatha sipped her coffee but she was smiling just a little. He took that as permission to continue.

“I stayed away because…I was good at it. I am a warlord. The world around me has changed but I have not. Not really. Being terrible, being a deterrent, raising an army and laying siege to enemy forces; I _knew_ how to do that. I was capable of that and no longer out of place. It gave me a purpose from which to learn new skills. How to operate in the world around me. It was enough for me to know you were alive and safe and…for the most part unaware of the more savage side of myself that still lies just beneath my skin.”

“I hate to burst your bubble, dear Count, but I have _always_ been aware of your savagery.” Agatha’s molten gaze raked him again and a smirk kicked at her mouth. “Danger has always been a lure to me.”

“I know…but there is a difference between the _idea_ of being bonded to a -hmm- bad boy and the reality of sharing a bed with a killer. Particularly one as practiced as I. My intent was to stay away. For the foreseeable in the very least. I was going to leave you to your life as undisturbed as I could but…then you found me. You sought me out and you kept seeking me out and that was very cruel of you. I can withstand anything bar hope it would seem.”

“Do you still think me cruel?” Agatha set her empty coffee cup aside. “I never meant to bring you back here against your will.”

“I’m in love with you, Agatha. Of course I was willing.”

Agatha sucked in a harsh breath at- - _that_.

He had never said it before. He had called her his love and other endearments. Had attempted to charm her. He had never hidden his affection for her through the bond but he had also never, ever, admitted it verbally. Had never just come out with it.

No bravado, no ego, no hubris to it. Simply a statement of fact.

The Earth circled the sun. Rain fell from the sky. 

Dracula loved Agatha.

Huh.

“What, exactly, do you want from me?” Her voice was very quiet and he could tell he had unsettled her but it wasn’t in him to deny that he was all in.

“Everything.” He shoved his own cup aside, the coffee forgotten. He straightened, looming a little closer to her. “Everything that you will give me.”

“Deal.” Agatha’s hand fisted in his shirt, pulling him the last few inches toward her and arching up onto her toes to meet him.

Dracula couldn’t help the purr that rumbled out of him when her lips met his. He did so enjoy kissing Agatha, even if he had precious little experience of doing so.

His hands lifted, cradling her head, angling her a little and deepening the kiss. Her lips parted for him, tongue darting to meet his and he growled, crowding closer to her. He had considered himself a worldly man even before romping about the globe on his mission to destroy the Harkers but Agatha _knew what she was doing_.

He claws threaded through his hair, raking at his scalp, thumbs sweeping over the high lines of his cheekbones. She petted him, thrumming pleased sounds from her tongue to his, crushing closer to him with every passing second. Her arms wound around his neck and Dracula lifted her easily when she climbed him like a tree.

She was scorching. Even under the damp mess of her clothes, her skin singed him wherever they touched. He could hear the pound of her heart in her chest, feel the thrum of her pulse thunder through her entire body. She was so incredibly alive and he wanted to melt into her. He didn’t want to know where he ended and she began.

He held her up with one arm around her waist and his free hand tangled in her hair. He pulled free the tie that held her hair up and tunnelled his fingers into her thick mane as it tumbled free. Falling around them in cool tendrils against skin that practically steamed.

Dracula jolted in surprise when his legs hit something rather solid and he looked about himself with surprise. He had walked right into the table all the way across the apartment. He had bypassed the stairs entirely, more intent on Agatha in his arms.

“Put me down.”

He obeyed immediately, breath sawing in and out of his chest, and set Agatha down on the polished table top. He was fully prepared to give her space, to step back and let her gather herself but Agatha was committed now and had decidedly opposite intentions.

He sucked in a harsh breath when her hands fisted in his shirt and she shredded it entirely in two. His brows rose when cool air from the apartment whispered over his heated skin but Agatha scooted closer to him again, hands spanning his chest.

“Much better.” She breathed against his mouth, stealing another bite of a kiss before leaning back to study him.

He’d changed more than a little since the last time she had seen him this close. He had been a large man before, physically imposing even if he had not been musclebound but it would seem that waging war agreed with him greatly. He had lost whatever extra weight languishing at the bottom of the sea had allowed and had seemingly replaced it with muscle. His shoulders seemed broader, muscles paved over his chest and cobbled down over his stomach as if he were smuggling paint rollers under there.

Agatha’s teeth sank into her lip, her fingers sliding over the simmering strength fluid like molten metal beneath his skin. Dark hair dusted over his forearms, roped with muscle as they were, curling across his chest, down over the definition of his stomach, leading in a happy little trail beneath his belt. Agatha made a mental note to follow it at the soonest opportunity but she was distracted by the huge scar on his chest.

From his battle with the ghoul. A huge sunburst of a scar bloomed from the centre of his chest, the ragged star shaped mark dark and flushed near crimson next to his tanned skin. The hair grown back over it was bleached silver with the trauma and she remembered well how he had been in pieces when she had found him. How he had run himself right onto a coat stand of all things when he had thought her gone from his life.

Agatha leaned forward, pressing a kiss to the scar before she could stop herself and she felt his breathing hitch beneath her lips. Her fingers toyed with the leather of his belt and he growled, half in protest.

“You are overdressed, my love.” Dracula redirected her hands, his own fingers snagging in the material of her sweater. She had opted for a simple clinging scoop neck that morning. His claws plucked at the wool, admiring the rich purple colour on her and then he tugged a little, his eyes meeting hers in a silent question even then.

Agatha huffed out a breath, gripping the hem of her sweatshirt and whisking it up over her head, flinging it the length of the table to crumple forgotten to the floor.

Watery lemon sunlight streamed in through a gap in the clouds outside, gilding her skin. She was paler than he, for the first time. Not having spent a year gadding about the world in various tropical climates.

Still, she was by far the most captivating creature he had ever met. The sunlight haloed around the sheen of her hair, leaving her face in shadow but he could see the wicked white of her smile still. She appeared as something ethereal and otherworldly to him and he could scarcely believe that she was finally there in front of him.

“You’re staring, husband.” Agatha’s claws raked under his chin, combing through his beard and Dracula’s dark eyes burned molten at her words.

“You are worth appreciating, _wife_.”

“One would think you hadn’t had a woman in far too long.” Agatha smirked into his lips when he pressed another biting kiss to her.

“I have never had you and you are all that I want.” Dracula hooked his thumbs beneath her bra straps, dragging them slowly down over her shoulders. He pressed hot nipping kisses to the freckles dusting like stars over her skin there. He lifted his head only to dart another glance at her. “I will not be your first?”

“No.” Agatha snorted and then arched a brow at him. Was that to be a problem?

“Good.” He grinned wickedly, laving his tongue in a hot stripe over the swell of her breast. “Your judgement that I am your finest lover should be an informed one.”

Agatha laughed at the casual ego he still bandied about but he would not be him without it. She tangled her fingers in his hair, directing his mouth lower as he peeled her out of her bra, letting it fall to the floor. He bent his head to her, his mouth closing over one nipple and his fingers toying delicately with the other.

Agatha’s head tipped back on a groan, toppling back onto the table and he growled, following her down. Her legs lifted, winding around his waist and she rolled up against him. He sucked in a hissing breath at her scorching heat against the iron bar of his cock. She ground up against him, teasing them both and he rumbled a low warning of sound. A warning that she gleefully ignored, raking her claws gently down his back. Not hard enough to break the skin but sharp enough to leave zinging red lines in her wake.

He tore at her slacks, the button of the snap pinging away never to be seen again. Agatha rocked her hips up off the table, helping him to undress her, grinning sharp and bright when he dragged her trousers down and off.

He nipped at her ribs with his teeth, leaving little flushes of red on her skin. His claws trailed electric over the quivering muscles of her stomach to pluck at the lace of her underwear at her hips. He sliced with a tug of his claws, ripping the underwear away with a scorch of silk between her legs that had her gasping. He grinned hot and feral, his mouth all but watering for her and he wanted nothing more than to _taste_.

Agatha slung her legs over his broad shoulders, her fingers tangling in his hair and she _howled_ when he bent to her. Delving between her legs and pressing a hot, open mouthed, kiss to her cunt. His tongue plunged into her, causing her hands to fist painfully in his hair but the sting in his scalp was inconsequential to the wet tang of her filling his mouth. Dracula gripped her thighs, stroking the corded muscle drawn tight there and pulled her more securely about his head. She was trying not to crush him in her grip though he was more than happy to have her hold onto him as tightly as she wanted to.

He would not break.

Something of that ilk seemed to filter through her heat haze of a mind because her ankles locked together over his back after a mere moment of hesitation. She gave herself over to him completely.

Dracula _growled_ into her. The vibration of his tongue inside her cunt arching her back clean up off the table. He could barely breathe but breathing seemed very unimportant in this instance and he could hold his breath for quite a while.

He taunted her. He couldn’t help himself. He was unlikely to have her at his disposal again any time soon. His tongue stroked deep, digging into her cunt until his jaw ached. His thumbs spreading her open, nose bumping at her clit indirectly enough to be almost accidental but hard enough that she whimpered in the back of her throat and huffed with frustration when he didn’t follow through.

She was cursing him in Dutch but quite unable for the moment to do anything about it. He had her pinned to the table with his mouth and one arm slung over her hips, fingers stroking the tightening muscles over her abdomen. She was all long and lean and trembling for him and Dracula found it far more intoxicating than anything he’d ever come across before.

She was so responsive. Her breathing hitched with every lunge of his tongue fucking into her, her hips canting up against his mouth whenever he kissed his way higher, lashing long flat licks against her clit. She quivered around the first finger he pushed deep into her and keened for the second. She gasped high and breathless on the third and he growled with satisfaction at every sound he wrung from her.

She was _so strong_. He had known, academically, that she was far stronger than any mortal woman, but the bruising force of her cunt gripping his fingers as he curled them inside her was a startling reminder that she was to be unlike anyone he’d ever had before.

His cock throbbed in his trousers, nearly folded in half with the unforgiving material and he did his best to ignore it. He could feel the hot leak of precum drooling from the head of his cock and he wanted nothing more than to bury himself inside her but _not yet_.

A lady always comes first.

He was so engrossed in learning her, discovering what made her breathing hitch and dragged a wail from her throat, that he happened upon her orgasm almost without realising what he was about. His fingers curled deep inside her, finding that spongey patch of inner flesh that caused her hips to stutter just so. Dracula bent his head, catching her clit between his fangs oh-so gently and lashed her once, twice, thrice, with his tongue.

She fell apart beautifully for him.

He grinned, teeth bared against her clit and she shivered violently beneath him. Throbbing shocks of pleasure arcing through her body. Lighting her up from within. Her cunt clamped tight around his fingers, muscles grasping him firm enough to crush his fingers together. Throbbing molten and fierce. Desperate.

Dracula kept her on the edge, sending her back and forth over the precipice as long as he could. He gentled only when she whimpered plaintively, pushing at his head and he drew back a little, resting his cheek on the flushed, sweat slicked skin of her inner thigh. Gaze traversing the heaving length of her body, resting on her flush faced. She looked absolutely ruined and he preened a little. Her lips parted, cheeks scored with heat, mouth bruised with the force of her teeth savaging her lower lip.

She panted a moment, Dracula straightening from his crouch with a wince when his cock throbbed in complaint. He rolled his head on his neck, easing the strain in the muscles there and planted his hands on either side of her ribs, smirking down at her in that self-satisfied manner she found so infuriating.

“Brute.” She panted.

He showed her all his teeth in a wicked smile.

She attempted to scowl but it wouldn’t take.

“Come here.” Agatha purred for him, reaching up to grip his shoulders and pulling herself upright to meet him.

She was not at all bothered by the taste of herself on his tongue, licking into his mouth for a groanworthy kiss. His hands fluttered a moment, resting on her hips, kissing her deeply.

Though she was far from idle.

Agatha, it would seem, bounced back from mind blowing orgasm remarkably quickly. She had his belt out of his slacks before he even realised what she was about. The rasp of his trouser zipper against the back of her hand filled the room before the clunk of the belt buckle hitting the floor could echo.

Dracula growled a thundering sound into her lips when her fingers ghosted beneath his underwear and slipped hot and eager around the head of his cock.

“Careful.” He nipped hot kisses along her jaw. “My control is nothing but a façade.”

“I am _well_ aware.” She laughed into him and shoved at his trousers, pushing them down over his legs, his shorts following close behind.

It was a moment for him to wriggle out of his clothes and shoes. A moment drawn out by her hand wrapping fully around the barrel of his cock and stroking meaningfully.

“Agatha.” He hissed and she chuckled into his neck, pressing a hot bite there. Her palm stroking up and down the length, from the broad base to the dripping head of his cock.

Her thumb swept through the moisture gathered there, drawing a whimper from his throat and she purred, pleased with herself.

“Wait, I have -uh- I forget what they’re called- -” Dracula would have been hard pressed to remember his own name in that instant but he was aware that he was attempting to recall something important. He hissed out a desperate breath when her tongue swirled around the lobe of his ear, teeth tugging just hard enough to make him shudder.

“Hmmm?” She pressed a kiss to the ragged top of his ruined ear. The flattened edge that had been shot off in an oil rig. She blew a hot breath over the sensitive shell of his ear and his knees nearly buckled.

“Protection!” He sourced the word finally. “I have…condoms? Somewhere.”

“Ah. No point.” Agatha smiled at him, nipping at his lower lip. “We’re too strong, love. They just get shredded.”

“Oh.” Dracula faltered a moment, trying to think clearly despite how she was twining her legs around his, dragging him ever closer to her heat. “I thought- -important?”

“Hmmm, yes. Very.” She favoured him with another long and wet kiss, seemingly praising him for thinking of such things. “Though unnecessary. We do not carry diseases and I control my fertility.”

“Useful.” He was evidently confused. It was very difficult to think when all of his blood was heading south. “How?”

“Sheer bloody mindedness. Now, are you going to fuck me or not?” Agatha huffed, patience a finite resource.

“Yes. Yes. Definitely. Yes _please._ ” Dracula let go of any trace of his argument and focussed instead on more salient details.

Like the fact that if Agatha’s clever little fingers kept doing what they were doing, he’d be done before he got anywhere and he wasn’t satisfied with having her come all over him only once.

Agatha purred, happy with such enthusiastic agreement and pulled him to her. He went willingly, pressing close as she scooted to the edge of the table, her legs bracketing his hips. Her hand stroked the length of his cock and she smiled into his mouth.

He was _huge_. Incubi tended to be on the ‘slightly intimidating’ end of the endowment spectrum but she rather thought that Dracula in a league of his own. Not only was he greater than the span of her two hands in length but the girth of his cock was such that she couldn’t meet her fingers around the shaft of him. He was going to ruin her for any other and she was quite content with that state of affairs.

He was so _big_. Large all over. His towering height which had made him all but a behemoth in the distant past, the breadth of his bull wide shoulders, the muscle roping the bulk of his ranging frame. Even the comparative narrowness of his hips was going to cause a rather delightful strain on her inner thighs and Agatha was practically giddy at the thought.

They came together with Agatha guiding his cock to her entrance and Dracula spreading her legs wide with the span of his hands. She was well prepared for him, sopping wet and lissom from his tongue and fingers but he still had to work his hips, rocking inch after inch into her tight heat.

He growled into her throat when her head fell back, unable to keep upright with the waves of scorching pleasure rolling out from her cunt. God, he was huge. She felt stretched impossibly wide, her inner muscles twitching and grasping around the invasion of his cock.

“ _Fuck_.” He breathed into her neck and Agatha could only whimper in response.

Her claws spanned his shoulders, digging sharp into the muscle there. Her legs twined around his hips, heels locked together over his ass and she urged him deeper when he seemed to hesitate.

They both groaned, shuddering when he sank those last few inches into her. The brutal stretch sent sparks spiralling from the tips of Agatha’s fingers to the ends of her toes. She was so full of him she thought she could feel him in her throat. Freezing hot shocks lit up her spine when he bottomed out, the base of his cock grinding against her clit and the head nudging at the mouth of her womb.

They were not, in fact, a perfect fit. If she had to guess she’d say that he was just a little too big for her but Agatha was blissful with that discovery.

“So hot. So tight.” He murmured into her skin, shivering. “I am going to make a fool of myself.”

“Did that decades ago.” Agatha gasped and he laughed, rumbling into her. She moaned, spine arching at the sensation and he growled in response. She’d have thought it was ridiculous if it wasn’t so damned good.

He appeared to be trying to still himself, keep control. Stay refined.

Well, none of that.

He choked when she rolled her hips, welcoming him impossibly deeper. His hips bucked into hers involuntarily and they both groaned at the sensation.

“ _Yesss.”_ Agatha hissed for him, tangling her fingers in his hair and clutching him close to her.

They were helpless after that. He drew back, pulling his cock almost completely free of her and then sinking blissfully back inside. He gasped, chest heaving, the sensations rolling through his body from the way her cunt clasped tight around him were like a brick to the back of the head and he was senseless for her in an instant.

He fell into a mindless rut. His mouth crushing against hers in a searing kiss. Her back arched beneath him, bending back to let him have his way. He growled into her, hot and heavy and possessive. The lewd wet sounds of their fucking were music to his ears. Punctuated by her breathy moans and his huffing growls.

It was far from refined but that wasn’t what they were about. She wanted him and he her. The talking was done with and now it was nothing but a mindless claim of their flesh for one another.

He wound one hand through her hair, wrapping the thick rope of it around his wrist. He pulled at her, arching her spine prettily for him, leaving her chest upraised for his attentive lips and tongue. She keened for him, letting him have his way and thrummed a deep and pleased sound when his other hand snaked between her legs, his thumb swiping hot and heavy over her clit. She squirmed, writhing on his cock and Dracula grinned.

Agatha clutched at his shoulders, her claws raking him, striping his back like he’d been whipped. She was frenzied for him, rocking up to meet his every thrust, expletives falling from her lips on breathy moans. The table creaked alarmingly beneath them but neither cared.

He drove her wild. His cock pounded in and out of her, filling her deliciously. She was lost in a swelter of sensation. Heat building in her in waves. His hand busy between her legs, held captive by his hand in her hair. He could do whatever he wished to her and that was far more intoxicating to Agatha than she had thought it ever would be.

Dracula pressed hot and biting kisses up the column of her neck, nipping hard at her throat, sucking dark bruises over her pulse point, his fangs _just_ snagging on her skin. The hint of danger all too real. That coupled with the edge of his claw raking so softly against her clit sent her screaming over the edge, again.

Agatha bucked against him, her cunt snapping tight around his cock and Dracula threw back his head and roared. He pushed deeper into her, rocking his hips, sinking into her cunt as far as he could go and she savoured every inch of him. Hot vice like muscles pulsed around his cock, from root to tip, milking him for everything he had. He shuddered, knees threatening to buckle, trembling all over.

Agatha sagged back, toppling to the tabletop and he followed her down. His hand still buried in her hair and his lips dragging over the sharp line of her jaw.

They were a mess.

He was littered with bruising bites that had never quite broken the skin, scores of claw marks cross hatching across his back. His hair was wild, his beard stained and wet with her and his eyes more than a little dazed. He was slick with sweat and shivered as if he had run a marathon.

She was little better. Rubbed raw in places from his beard, the smallest scores and nips from his teeth flushing over her skin. Fingerprints bruised her hips, every muscle she had shook with fatigue, her skin slick with sweat and her hair was a _mess_.

They were both grinning like fools.

Dracula stayed precisely where he was. It was not exactly comfortable, the cool wood of the table biting into his thighs, but nothing could convince him to draw free of Agatha. Not with her scorching heat wrapped around his cock and her arms and legs tangled all about him. They were both breathing hard, chests heaving against one another, but quite clearly savouring the blissed out feeling that had been a long time coming.

“You’ve ruined me, woman.” He spoke with a rasp into her neck.

“You started it.” Her voice was hoarse from screaming.

He lifted his head suddenly, something occurring to him.

“You did not feed.”

“No.” Agatha was far too mellow to be concerned about such things. She combed her fingers through his trimmed beard, it had felt lovely between her legs. “Then again, neither did you.”

“I…forgot.” Dracula realised after a moment, blinking at himself.

Well, if he had needed any further proof that she owned him completely…

“Do you not hunger?”

“Always.” Agatha’s fingers, claws sheathed, danced over his spine, counting the stripes she had lain on him.

“Then why- -?”

“Because I just wanted _you_.” She huffed, he seemed to be doing his best to ruin her post coital bliss. “If I wanted a meal, I could have literally anyone else. I allow this for you alone.” She waved at the pointed lack of space between them. The new intimacy she afforded no one else.

“Oh.” Dracula stilled, absorbing that. A slow and smug smile pulled at his lips. “That’s good.”

“Yes. You were.”

“Merely ‘good’?”

“There’s always room for improvement.” Agatha told him archly. “Besides, I truly am hungry.”

“Well,” Dracula pushed himself upright, bringing her with him and hoisting her up into his arms, “it is my duty to provide for you is it not?”

“An onerous task.” Agatha looped her arms around his neck, smiling sleepy and sated for him.

“Where does the lady wish round two to take place?” Dracula made a show of looking around the apartment. He planned on christening every surface at the first opportunity.

They’d find the bed eventually he supposed.

“The shower. My feet are filthy.”

Dracula gusted a laugh, remembering only then that she had sprinted across the city for him. He inhaled deeply, absorbing her scent and savouring every part of her, heading for the stairs.

“Whatever you want.” He promised her.

“You.” She combed her fingers through his wild hair and smiled for him, soft and secret.

“Only you.”

Dracula grinned.

About time. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I could add another chapter?? An epilogue of sorts. 
> 
> Unsure if it is required though. 
> 
> I dunno. 
> 
> The End?

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you guys liked it! 
> 
> I loved writing it and updates will be twice a week.


End file.
